


Gaining Independence

by justanotherworthlessweirdo



Category: Original Work
Genre: Belly Kink, Complete, Feeding Kink, Gen, Illustrations, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:28:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29923086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherworthlessweirdo/pseuds/justanotherworthlessweirdo
Summary: Following a failed suicide attempt, Hermione, a student at Oxford University, decides to finally defy her emotionally abusive parents and give in to her greatest desire: getting fat.
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This does contain EXPLICIT DEPICTIONS AND DISCUSSIONS OF SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION. I hope it's not exploitative, but if that's too much for you there's no shame in skipping this one.
> 
> Special thanks to Peachpeachplumb for the illustration! Check out their work at: https://peachpeachplumb.tumblr.com/

If her parents really just wanted her to be happy, Hermione thought, they should never have named her Hermione. It was really a stupid name, partly because of how pompous it sounded but mainly because it makes everybody immediately think of the Harry Potter character. Every. Single Time. Which would be annoying even if she did like Harry Potter, but Hermione despised the franchise. As a fantasy junkie, she hated how, in her view, Rowling’s cliché teen melodramas stole attention away from much more deserving books, and how it is was it that got the billion dollar film treatment, not those. Over time, as she was forced to sit through the movies again and again with her Potter-obsessed parents, she also came to notice Rowling’s treatment of the British public school system was elitist at best, and problematic at worst. Once Rowling’s tweets started becoming more and more unintentionally offensive, Hermione’s hatred of the books began to extend to their author. And it was after this happened that Hermione realised that, if Rowling hadn’t written those stupid books and inspired her parents to give her that stupid name, maybe Hermione’s life wouldn’t be anywhere near as shit.

J K Rowling ruined Hermione’s life.

At least, she partly ruined it, in Hermione’ opinion. There were countless other things to blame for Hermione’s awful mental state at the start of her second year at Oxford, but having to endure countless jokes and remarks about her name was at least part of the problem.

As for the other parts? Well, her parents were to blame, for one. Her mum for her stubborn refusal to treat Hermione as if she were any older than eight. Her dad for just… well, for doing fuck all, really. Hermione supposed he treated her like a child too, but he wasn’t around enough to make much of an impact. He was always off in Dubai or LA or wherever; Hermione had no idea what his job actually was, she only knew that it paid very, very well to a degree that she imagined was disproportionate to its actual difficulty.

Her mum, then, was the real problem of the two. Back when she was at school, Hermione used to hear other girls complain about their overbearing parents all the time, and every time she’d have to suppress a sarcastic smirk. So what if Tracey’s mum won’t let her out after midnight? Hermione wasn’t allowed out after seven. So what if Frankie’s parents stopped her wearing crop-tops? Hermione wasn’t allowed to buy her own clothes, and so had to make do with the wardrobe her mother brought her, which mostly consisted of horizontal stripes and ugly overalls. Hermione couldn’t dye her hair, she couldn’t take driving lessons, and she most certainly couldn’t go out with anyone. She was far too young for that.

Some of this had changed when Hermione started at Oxford, but not much. She now had a bank account for the first time in her life, which meant she could finally buy her own clothes, not that she ever did. She could go out as late as she wanted, although she was usually in bed by 9:30, just like at home. However, Hermione’s mum still expected her to call every Saturday, and insisted on being sent photos all of Hermione’s receipts, threatening to stop paying Hermione’s allowance if she thought her daughter was “overspending”. And of course, once she was back at home for the vacs, Hermione was treated just the same as normal, which especially sucked considering Oxford terms are only eight weeks long.

Not that she complained about the short terms when they were so unpleasant. When she first applied to Oxford, Hermione hoped that university would be a fresh start for her, but if anything it was even worse than school. At least at school a shy, mousy little girl like her could find friends among the equally socially inept. At Oxford, it seemed, nobody was socially inept. Everyone spoke in perfect Queen’s English, had perfect faces and perfect bodies and seemed to have no insecurities whatsoever. Or any degree of self-awareness; Hermione had met people she could barely believe existed outside of _Downton Abbey_. Even the so-called “nerds” at Oxford would have been welcomed into the popular cliques at her school. They were all so arrogant, so intimidating, so…

Harry Potter.

She had no friends at Oxford. Hermione had to been too shy to go to any of the fresher’s weeks events, and that basically, she figured, doomed her to spend the next three years as a total outcast. She’d kept in touch with a few of her old school friends, who all seemed to be having a much better time than her at supposedly lesser universities, but they couldn’t help much when they were so far away. So, Hermione felt lonely, incredibly lonely. And as long as she stayed at Oxford she couldn’t see that changing.

This was why, at the start of her second year, Hermione decided she wanted to die.

She sat in her building’s bathroom on the toilet with the lid down, cradling her knife gently tossing it back and forth between her hands. She only owned one knife, because her parents would freak out if she ever brought another, and it was really too tiny to be good at cutting anything but she felt she had to make do. That would make it hurt more, she knew, but at this point she didn’t care. She just wanted it to end.

Slowly, she heaved herself up from the toilet. She wasn’t fat, not at all, but she was unfit, and she knew it. Last time she’d been to the doctor’s, she was told she weighed six and a half stone, or ninety-one pounds, which made her nineteen pounds underweight for a woman of her height. That was a few months ago (Hermione couldn’t remember how many), but her whippet-like physique didn’t look like it had filled out any more since then. How could it, when she lived with parents who had always denied her most carbs and all junk food, and who had put Hermione on a “weight-gain diet” that consisted largely of the same bland dishes, just cooked in more vegetable oil? It was her skinniness, combined with her hatred of exercise, that made getting up more effort than for Hermione she felt it should have been. She was unfit; another reason for her to hate herself.

In that disgusting Laura Ashley floral dress, the only dress she owned that rose above the knee, Hermione stepped towards the shower. She wanted to get this over and done with quickly but, try as she might, she seemed incapable of taking any more than one step at a time. One step. Than another. Than another, each one slightly shorter than the last.

Finally, she collapsed on the floor in tears. Today was not the day.

***

“And how long ago was this?” the woman asked.

“Five days ago,” replied Hermione.

“Okay.” There was a long silence, which in such a quiet room felt especially awkward. Hermione could no longer bear to look at the counsellor’s face, glancing down at the woman’s feet. The black heels she wore seemed too tight, with the top of her feet bulging out of the front like bread dough that just won’t quite fit in the loaf tin. There were no visible bones on her feet at all, the whole surface was just smooth and fleshy, and her ankles… her ankles…

“Well, I’d like to thank you for telling me all this.”

Hermione jerked back up to look at the woman’s face. It was even smoother, even fleshier than her feet, with cheeks that looked oh so squishy and gave her face an adorable spherical appearance. The golden, curly locks surrounding it gave it an almost cherubic appearance. The woman smiled. Her plump lips seemed made for smiling.

“Seriously, it’s okay.”

That comment took Hermione aback. This time the therapist did notice, judging by the way she raised her eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she said, “that was a bit less… formal… than I was expecting. You’re…”

“Young,” the therapist said, bluntly. “I’m twenty-six, FYI. Sorry, does that intimidate you? It’s alright to say…”

“No,” Hermione replied obstinately, “Actually I think it’s better that way. I haven’t had a casual conversation in a long time. Not that this is…”

“Casual.”

“Yes.”

“Well, to get back to business… can you talk me through how you were feeling at that moment? On the floor?”

Hermione paused before answering.

“I don’t know. Really. I don’t. Like, I hated myself for not having the guts to go through with it, but I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t go through with it.”

Another silence.

“It was like… something was stopping me.”

That piqued the woman’s interest.

“Do you have any idea what that something was? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“But it was strong enough to stop you from going through with it? All by itself?”

“I guess it was.”

“Then I’d say, whatever that thing is, you need to nurture it. Let it grow. Help it grow.”

“But what is it?”

The counsellor shrugged her shoulders. They bounced ever so slightly with the movement.

“Only you can figure that out, Hermione. It probably isn’t just one thing. Think of it as the stuff you haven’t achieved. The stuff you haven’t quite given up hope on achieving. I know it might seem like there is no hope, but I don’t think you completely accept that.”

Hermione was puzzled.

“We’re coming to the end of our session,” the counsellor said, “and I really, genuinely wish I didn’t have to leave you but there’ll be someone down in the waiting room who needs help just as much as you. Is that okay?” Hermione nodded. “But when you go away I want you to think about the stuff you want to achieve. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your wildest fantasies. I don’t care how unrealistic they are, I want to hear about them. Got it?”

“Sure.”

“Great, I’ll see you the same time next week!”

Hermione got up to shake hands with the usual amount of effort, but whatever difficulty she was having was nothing compared to the woman in front of her.

“Jeez… gotta get in better shape.”

Once she was finally stood up, Hermione could fully take in the size of the woman in front of her. The navy dress she wore certainly didn’t obscure anything. Hermione had only ever seen women that big online, she had to be at least 350lbs at minimum. Her enormous double belly gently bounced up and down with her breaths in an almost hypnotic fashion. The upper belly roll, unusually Hermione noted, was bigger than the lower one, and the way it flared out to the sides complimented the woman’s circular face by giving her an almost completely spherical shape. Her thick chubby thighs, her chunk arms, her breasts that had lost none of their pertness despite their size, everything was perfectly round, impossibly round.

Before she knew what was happening, Hermione suddenly felt herself enveloped by soft warmth. It felt like hot dough pressing against body, moulding around her every angle, covering her in comfort. The woman was hugging her. She was hugging her!

And then she wasn’t.

“Sorry, was that too much?” the woman said, slightly flustered. “I’m new to this job, in case you can’t tell.”

“It’s fine,” said Hermione, “I think I needed that.”

“Thank god,” she replied, “I’m Dr Seele by the way, but you can call me Harper.”

“Well, thank you, Harper.” No matter how many times her tutors asked that she do so, calling university staff by their first names always felt uncomfortable to Hermione. But not with Harper. Something about her seemed to quash that inhibition into oblivion. Hermione decided she would come back for another appointment. And she would think about what she wanted.

***

Hermione lay face forward on her bed, in bright pink pyjamas that were at least two sizes too big. She felt cold, like in she always did in her room, with its medieval stone walls, tissue-thin Victorian glass window and Edwardian bronze radiator. Her pyjamas made the problem worse: they were too loose, too thin, to offer any real insulation. Shivering, she brushed her scruffy auburn hair to one side, took the pen from behind her ear and scrawled on the paper in front of her:

“WHAT DO I WANT?”

Such a simple question, but it seemed impossible to answer. How could she want anything when she didn’t want a future? And yet, the fact she was still around meant she had to want _something_. Maybe _somethings_. But after racking her brain for ten minutes she still felt no closer to knowing what they were, so she threw the first sheet of paper away, and wrote on the one beneath:

“WHAT DO I ENJOY?”

This felt slightly easier. Reading. She enjoyed reading, or at least she had done before a year studying Beowulf and Virginia Woolf sucked away all her joy from it. Nevertheless, she still loved fantasy books, didn’t she? It had been ages since she’d had time to read one, but she definitely wanted to read more. And she did occasionally stumble on a book in her studies that she actually liked: Pynchon, Henry James, the Brontës… So she enjoyed reading, then.

READING

Anything else? Cooking, she enjoyed cooking. It was testament to how much she enjoyed cooking that she even had fun making the recipes mum taught her, with their abundance of kale and lentils, if she didn’t enjoy eating them.

COOKING

And if she enjoyed cooking, then she had to enjoy eating, didn’t she? Sure, she hated “clean eating”, as her mum practiced, but on the rare occasions she had managed to acquire food her mum would forbid, she almost always loved it. Anything baked, anything with sugar, especially cookies, white chocolate, waffles…

EATING

Then her mind started to go to that place it always did when she thought about food, a place she wished it wouldn’t go in spite of how much she loved it when it did. A place not even her parents had managed to intrude on. Should she write it down? People might see… No. That was her mum talking. No one would ever see this sheet. So should she write it? Her brain said no. The burning in her crotch said yes.

FAT

Hermione loved fat. She knew it was wrong, she knew it was unhealthy, but she did. She loved all kinds of fat on all sorts of people: flabby men with big, round beer guts, curvy women with jiggling, dimpled bottoms, double chins, man boobs, arm wings… it wasn’t so much a sexual thing as a general admiration. She wasn’t solely attracted to fat people, in fact if she thought a guy or a girl was hot they’d usually be super skinny. No, she just loved fat itself, the way it moved, the way it made a person looked, the way it felt… Actually, Hermione really no idea what _real_ fat felt like, she’d never been lucky enough to touch it with her bare hands, but she’d built up in image in her mind of what she thought it _had_ to feel like, and in her mind its was softest, cuddliest, comfiest thing on earth. Perhaps the reality would disappoint her when she did get to finally touch it, but she was fairly certain it wouldn’t.

And then, Hermione noticed, she was thinking about the future.

Nothing she’d thought about this far had got her doing that, not in any concrete terms. That had to be significant. Fat had to be significant. She chuckled at the thought.

But it didn’t matter. She’d never get to feel any. There were no really fat people at Oxford, or at least she’d never seen any: some were less toned by the rest, but in a such a competitive, and more importantly elite environment, there seemed to be a real stigma against fat. Besides, Hermione’s social skills were garbage: she’d never be able to befriend a fat person even if there were any around. The thought of even expressing her love of fat out loud seemed terrifying.

So she had to get fat. That seemed a less terrifying prospect. In fact, it seemed an inciting one. Being constantly enveloped in fat, cushioned on all sides by sumptuous softness, able to feel beautiful, to look at her body with pride. And the food! She could eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, she could get used to cooking big meals, tasty meals, eat out, get take-aways, all these forbidden pleasures…

She nearly cummed before the thought of her parents jerked her back to reality. They’d never let her. It’d horrify them! She’d always been terrified her parents would find out about her desires, having developed a routine growing up of deleting her search history every week in case her parents used the parental controls she knew they had to view it. Once she made this fantasy real, she couldn’t hide it from them any longer. They would know, and they’d be disgusted.

And yet, there was something subversive about that. Exploring her passions online was one of the few ways Hermione had ever defied her parents, as she’d spend hours in her teens just searching for the few feedist websites that weren’t blocked by the parental filters they placed on the wi-fi. Occasionally, she’d discover some real NSFW content, mostly on Tumblr before the filtering began, and whenever she did she’d feel thrilled, not just by the beauty of the fleshy forms in front of her, but by the fact that she had achieved something her parents had actively tried to prevent. Now she was alone for most of the year, she had her own money. Short of forcing her to diet when she was at home, could her parents actually do anything to stop her now?

No, she realised, they couldn’t. Which meant the only thing that was stopping her was herself. Finally, she’d realised what she wanted to achieve. She wanted to get fat. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t enough, but it was a start.


	2. Chapter 2

“And how were your classes this week, Hermione?”

“Good,” replied Hermione, hoping that would be enough of an answer to satisfy her mother. It wasn’t.

“I only ask, because you’re still only just starting you’re second year, and the workload could suddenly get a lot bigger. And I’ve read online on FOP-”

“What?”

“Forum of Oxford Parents, it’s a website we all use, don’t worry about it…”

On and on it went. These phone calls could last for over an hour. Hermione felt like groaning but refrained lest her mother hear her.

“But anyway, there’s lots of people on this website who are talking about how hard their kids found their second year. It’s supposed to be when work really starts to pile up. I just wanted to make sure you were on top of everything? I’d hate to see you fall behind.”

She really would. That was what was so terrifying.

“I’ll be fine, mum” Hermione answered, trying to sound as reassuring as she could.

“Are you sure, Hermione?” her mum asked, in a tone more suitable for addressing a naughty puppies. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes, mum.”

“Because there’s no harm in saying otherwise, not at all. I could help, Hermione. It’s what I’m here for. I could send you texts, to remind you to do your work, would you like that?”

Fuck, Hermione thought, not another one. Since she’d gone to Oxford her mum was constantly making “offers” like this. One time, she offered to call Hermione every day and quiz her knowledge of the books she was studying. Another, she offered to make Hermione a timetable telling her exactly how she should spend each hour of each day, with at least twelve hours a day devoted to study and zero devoted to breaks. Thankfully, Hermione had gotten fairly accustomed to wriggling out of these offers.

“That’s alright, mum.”

“Really? Are you sure, darling?”

“Yes, mum. I always set myself reminders on my phone.”

“Oh,” Hermione’s mother replied, sounding somewhat disappointed, “can you do that nowadays?”

“Yeah, so I wouldn’t waste your time. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m sorry, Hermione.” She wasn’t, Hermione knew. She’d make another offer in a few weeks. “I just worry about you, I can’t help it.”

So she should, thought Hermione, smiling.

***

A few seconds, and it would be here. The moment Hermione was waiting for. A moment she’d spent her whole life waiting for. Just a few more seconds…

The timer pinged. Fighting the urge to squeal, Hermione skipped over to the oven, donned her gloves and removed the tray. And there it was.

Hermione’s first pizza.

Her whole life pizza had been forbidden to her, and though she had managed to try some junk food in the past without her parents’ knowledge, she’d never attempted that with pizza. Until now. To her, eating pizza seemed almost symbolic of the concept of feedism; pretty much every WG story she’d read and every piece of fat art she’d seen featured pizza in some way. It just had to be, in her mind, the most fattening food out there, and that probably meant it was also the tastiest. That was why she’d spent so long browsing the supermarket shelves for the biggest, cheesiest, unhealthiest vegetarian pizza she could find: it was expensive, but this moment had to be special. Cheap pizza could come later, and he she hoped that, once she’d improved her appetite a little, it will.

Fuck, she thought, I’m really getting into this.

The kitchen in her building was tiny, so Hermione had to carry the pizza to her room, and by the time she’d got there the hype was unbearable. She couldn’t even wait to find a plate to put it on; she just lay the hot tray on her desk, slightly marking the wood, and tore in.

It was so worth the price.

Hermione savoured the first bite for all it was worth, but after that she ate like a woman possessed. In almost no time at all she’d torn through the first slice. Afterwards, she licked her lips, leaned back in her chair and exhaled. She could already feel the weight of the pizza on her stomach: it wasn’t very filling at all, but it was there. Hermione reckoned she’d be full up completely after the fourth slice.

However, she had already decided she’d finish the whole pizza. She grabbed another slice. And then another. And another.

Sure enough, by the fourth slice she felt full, but she pushed on. Fifth slice. Her stomach began to ache. Sixth slice. Now it really hurt, Hermione had never been this full. The pressure in her stomach seemed immense, as if all she’d eaten threaten to burst free. But she had to keep going. Seventh slice. One remaining. She had to keep going, she had to keep eating, had to show her parents, had to get fatter…

She’d done it.

Hermione slammed her hands on the desk, lifted her arms in the air and cheered. Nobody was around to see, but she didn’t care. That was the most she’d ever eaten in her life. It was an achievement.

And she knew that, in an hour or so, she’d have some of those freshly baked cookies she’d brought for dessert.

***

It has always taken for granted by students at Oxford that, during classes, tutors will provide them with tea and biscuits. This meant tutors’ popularity with their students is directly tied to the quality of the biscuits they supply: it’s no coincidence that the tutors most reviled by their students tend to only ever offer rich teas or ginger nuts, or in some extreme cases no biscuits at all. Tutors who really care about their students, meanwhile, only serve the best: chocolate digestives, Jammie Dodgers, Oreos.

Dr Mildred Evans, or Milly as she preferred to be called, was in the latter category. She made sure to always keep a large stash of good biscuits for each of the classes she taught, and it seemed to Hermione that she never ran out The plate in the centre of her room was always piled high with biscuits, and if it ever became depleted during the course of a class, she’d always replenish it without anyone asking.

This was something Hermione wanted to take advantage of. It had only been three days since her decision to start gaining weight but her purse was already feeling the squeeze. She was used to being very spendthrift, a habit inherited from her mother, but on her last visit to the supermarket she just brought everything that looked tasty and fattening. And there was a lot of tasty and fattening foods out there. She knew she couldn’t afford to carry on shopping like that on a student budget, so free food, such as the sort provided by Milly, was very valuable.

But of course, they’d be other people there. She doubted Milly would think anything ill of her if she started pigging on out on the food she seemed all too willing to provide, but her classmates… They were all varying degrees of toned, and very judgmental. She almost dreaded their reactions as much as she did her parents’. But Hermione knew she needed food. She knew she needed calories. And she couldn’t let her classmates get in the way of that.

So it was with a mixture of excitement and fear that she approached Milly’s room for the class of the week. The door wasn’t open yet, so her classmates were waiting outside. They said hi, she mumbled hi back, and then they carried on with their conversation. This was usually how her interactions with them went outside of classes; sometimes Hermione would pluck up the courage to ask a question, but she rarely got more than a monosyllabic response. As she listened to them interrupt each other again and again, Hermione wondered if any of them really enjoyed listening to the others.

Mercifully, Milly opened her door a few minutes later.

“Hello everyone, do come in.”

She was a tall, slender woman in her late-fifties, although her boniness made her look older than she was. She wore her greying black hair in an incredibly scruffy beehive, and it, combined with her purple cardigan and orange patterned dress, made her look like how Hermione imagined a dancer from an early Beach Boys video would look nowadays. As soon as the thought popped into her head Hermione did her best to forget it; she knew she wouldn’t have a clue what Beach Boys videos looked like if it weren’t for her parents.

The students all sat down, and the teaching began. This term, Milly was teaching Chaucer, who she, like most English scholars, insisted was hilarious, academia as a whole seemingly having a very strange idea of what constitutes hilarity. The students, meanwhile, did their best to pay attention, and the biscuits, surely, would help with that.

There was always a tension for the first few minutes of any class: who would take the first biscuit? Everybody wanted a biscuit, but nobody wanted to be the first to take one. They’d look greedy, or uninterested in the lesson, or both, regardless of the fact that as soon as that first person took a biscuit everyone else in the class would.

Considering how gluttonous she planned on being later, Hermione thought it best to let somebody else be first. The tension rose, as Milly banged on and on about how a scene of a woman farting out of a window beautifully demonstrated why Chaucer deserved to be considered the greatest poet of his age. Finally, the tension was shattered, as it often was, by Heather, a blonde girl from Cheshire who easily ate more biscuits than anyone else in classes and yet somehow managed to keep her perfect slim hourglass figure.

Or rather, she used to eat more.

Normally, students didn’t like to take a biscuit unless somebody else was already taking one. There was an etiquette to the practice. Sometimes it would be Heather, sometimes it would be Darren, a brawny graduate of Eton who somehow managed to bring TS Eliot into any classroom discussion. On this day, however, it was always Hermione. Every. Single. Time. After three most students felt rude eating more, Hayley would normally stop at five, but Hermione went further. How much further, she had no idea, she lost count at eight.

After all, it was hard to concentrate on counting and the class at the same time, especially as she became more and more aware of her classmates’ judging looks. It was just Ruby at first, an Essex-native who considered herself the most desirable girl on college simply because she was probably the slimmest, but soon Maxine joined in, then the boys, then even Hayley, though she looked more concerned than anyone else. Hermione felt like they were piercing her flesh with their looks, cutting through to her skeleton. She shook, she sweated, and whether it was the amount she’d eaten or the butterflies in her stomach she couldn’t be sure but she felt she’d be sick. It looked as if all eyes were on her, that everyone was judging her, that all they could think about was how much of a pig she looked…

She had to stop. The rest of the three-hour class passed by her. Once it was over, Hermione was first to get up and the first to leave. As she scurried away she could have sworn she heard a posh male voice behind her say “Did you see how many bloody biscuits that girl ate?”

***

“So how’s your week been?” asked Harper.

A long silence. As ever. It was so hard for Hermione know where to start. Especially with the spherical siren in front of her. Finally, slowly, she answered.

“I tried thinking about what I wanted to achieve. And… I could only think of one thing so I decided to start doing it straight away. But it was stupid. I gave up.”

Today was Friday. After her class on Monday, Hermione got back to her room as fast as she could, collapsed on her bed and devoured half a box of donuts in tears. As she ate, as she cried, she told herself again and again this had to be the last time, she could never ate like this again, her diet had to go back to normal. So it did. Back to the same old boring salads and raw vegetables. It was much harder to keep to that diet than it used to be, now that she knew just how good food could taste, but her willpower was strong. By the time of her meeting with Harper Hermione hadn’t relented once, although she’d come close when she spied a pack of white chocolate cookies left over from her big shopping spree at the back of her cupboard. To her, this had just been a brief experiment, a regrettable phase, something she needed to forget about. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t sad about it.

“What… was this goal?” Harper asks, tentatively.

A very long silence.

“I really don’t want to say,” said Hermione, finally. She looked away from Harper altogether. The counsellor’s bounteous beauty was taunting her.

“Well… You don’t have to tell me, but if you don’t that’ll make this a bit harder.”

“Sorry.” Hermione said sorry a lot, but whenever she said it she meant it.

“In that case… can I ask why you gave up? Why you felt it was stupid?” Hermione spent a few moments struggling to find a way to phrase her answer.

“What I was doing… to achieve wanted… people started noticing. And judging. It wasn’t exactly a… socially acceptable thing.”

“Alright” replied Harper, unsure how to take this, “you say people were judging you. Who? You don’t have to name them.”

“My classmates.”

“You stopped because your classmates judged you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you must care a lot about how they see you, then?”

That took Hermione aback a little.

“No, not really.” Hermione paused. “Like, I wish I had friends in class, but I don’t really want to be friends with the people in my class. They’re all very… snobby. They don’t acknowledge me a lot.”

“So them judging you… was that the first time they’d acknowledged you in a while?”

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

Harper didn’t answer, but just smiled expectantly. Her thick lips and plump cheeks seemed to radiate warmth.

“I guess…” Hermione began, tentatively, “they just don’t care about me very much.”

“Until last Monday.” Hermione nodded. “And the attention they gave you felt very negative.” Hermione nodded. Finally it dawned on her. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

“I shouldn’t care what they think, should I?”

“Hermione,” Harper replied, in a tone much more formal than Hermione was used to, “I can’t offer you advice unless you explicitly ask for it. Giving unrequested advice is about the worst thing a therapist or counsellor can do. It might be wrong, it might get you hurt, and you might hate me for it. Are you absolutely sure you want my advice? Are you prepared for what it might be?”

Hermione didn’t expect that much of a response, but after thinking it over, she decided that yes, she would.

“I think you should ignore them. If you feel they don’t care about you, and you don’t value their approval, then I think you should just pursue your goal despite them. I know it seems really hard, I get the sense social anxiety is a real problem for you, but if you really want to achieve… whatever this is, then you shouldn’t let it stop you from doing that. Maybe take it slower next time?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe don’t do… whatever it was you were doing in front of them as much as you were. Start small, do it a little bit around them, and when you feel fully comfortable with their reactions to you doing that much you can do it a little more. And again and again. Baby steps.” She paused. “This is just my opinion, mind.”

***

After her counselling session Hermione rushed back to her room as fast as she could. She locked the door and stripped down to her underwear, a white bra and matching panties, both slightly aged. She gazed at herself in the mirror.

It didn’t look like her five day relapse had done much damage. The bones were still gone. Hermione was pleased with how quickly she’d rid herself of them; she reckoned because she was so underweight her body was more naturally inclined to put on fat. Her ribs were still slightly visible, but they’d be gone soon, Hermione would see to that.

Suddenly, for what reason she knew not, Hermione started slowly moving her hands down the side of her body, tracing her body. She wasn’t curvy, not yet, but her sides now felt slightly softer to the touch, her hips especially. She reached down further with one hand, tracing her thigh. Even softer. She slapped it. A tiny jiggle; barely visible, but there. The same in her calves when she lifted her leg, though she knew that was more a result of her no longer working out rather than her added weight. She lifted her breasts: they seemed heavier, she could have sworn her bra felt a little tighter. Turning to the side confirmed her suspicions: it was just by a little bit, but her breasts definitely bulged out of the top of her bra now.

Then she noticed her two proudest achievements. Firstly, her arse. She couldn’t lift it with both hands, as much as she tried, but it definitely stuck out a centimetre or two now, where it used to be completely flat and skeletal. Secondly, and best of all, her tummy. It wasn’t a belly, not yet, it wasn’t even much of a tummy, but she could slap it and it shook. And she could pinch fat there. Actual, real-life fat. Her fat. She rolled it around in her fingers, moulding it, savouring the weight, the texture, exploring all the different ways it would move and behave…

Yes. She needed more of that.

Hermione jumped on her bed, grabbed her phone and ordered a Dominoes.


	3. Chapter 3

Six weeks.

Six weeks since Hermione gave up caring about what other people thought about her.

Six weeks, and thirty pounds.

She couldn’t quite believe it. She knew she’d gained, that much was obvious, but this much? When she started gaining, she couldn’t see herself being any more than five pounds heavier by the end of term, and she’d have been absolutely ecstatic about it if that was all she gained. Instead, somehow, by some miracle, she’d gained roughly that amount every week, for six weeks. And there was still one week before term ended. Hermione couldn’t quite believe it.

But then, when she thought about it, it did make a lot of sense. Hermione had approached gaining with the same ruthless mentality she applied her studies. It was a part of her routine, just as much as classes and tutorials and essay writing were. Meals were planned to be as fattening as possible, but also as varied as possible so that she never got bored of any one dish. Shopping lists were made, with Hermione noting which products were cheaper at which supermarkets so as to be able to afford the biggest amount of junk food possible. Snacks were scheduled, one every hour. Stress eating became habitual, to the degree that Hermione could no longer finish an essay without working through an XL packets of chocolate digestives at the same time. All unnecessary exercise had been limited, with the help of the pedometer on Hermione’s phone. She’d worked hard to get fatter, harder than most gainers, so she shouldn’t have been so shocked, she realised, that it’d paid off.

And paid off it had. Deprived of fat for so long, Hermione’s body had been only too eager to chub up. Once starved and skeletal, it was now soft and pudgy, with the bones once dominated it now buried under a thick layer of fat. Hermione looked down at her new body as she stepped off the scales, and smiled. Her waist had widened, her thighs had thickened, and, for the first time in her life, Hermione had hips. Not horrible bony outcrops like she had before, but real, womanly hips that flared outwards a few centimetres. Hermione placed her hands on them. Once, they had felt sharp and bony, so she rarely put her hands on her hips like she saw so many other girls doing, but now, this pose felt comfortable. Enjoyable. Natural.

Somewhat less comfortable were Hermione’s breasts. Once tiny and barely noticeable, they’d ballooned since Hermione started gaining, and now they were far too big for all of her bras. Hermione had lost count of the number of time she’d adjusted her cleavage to prevent a wardrobe malfunction, but she did know that it seemed to be happening more and more lately. They weren’t perky, not at all, but Hermione didn’t care. If anything, she preferred her breasts the way they were, full, plump and flabby. She knew that breasts only looked like hers when they were primarily composed of fat, and that knowledge turned her on, big time. In fact, there was only thing that turned her on more.

Despite her burgeoning hourglass figure, it was clear that the vast majority of Hermione’s extra weight had gone to her tummy, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She could grab it now, squeeze it, feel all the fat in her hands, then let go and watch the whole thing jiggle back into shape. She could slap it an watch it wobble from side to side, and though it didn’t jiggle up and down yet, Hermione didn’t think it would be long before it did. Hermione loved playing with it, so much so that she often found herself doing it absent-mindedly, without ever really noticing that she’d started. It was just to soft, too succulent, too sexy not to touch constantly.

Hermione looked down at it and smirked. There was no doubt about it. This was the best decision she had ever made.

If there was one downside to getter fat, Hermione thought, it had to be walking. She’d tried to limit it as much as she could since she started gaining, but no matter how much she’d like to she couldn’t eliminate it from her life altogether. Laundry had to be done, classes had to be attended, shopping trips had to be done... It was exhausting.

Now, making the arduous thirty minute journey from her room to the college library, Hermione found herself wishing more than ever that she had a teleporter. She thought she unfit before, but _now_ , now that she was carrying around thirty pounds of extra fat, now that her ass jiggled with every step, now that her thighs chafed…

By the time Hermione arrived at the library, she doubted she could manage another step. She’d only planned to check out the books she needed and head back, but now that she was there she decided to stay and do her work at the library instead, just to give her poor feet a rest. Sighing, Hermione stepped through the library door.

For a second or so, nothing.

Then stares. Lots of stares. Harsh, unblinking stares, before everyone looked away and pretended it had never happened.

Why? What was wrong with her? Hermione knew she paranoid, but surely she couldn’t have imagined-

Then she noticed.

Hermione’s shirt had ridden up.

A long way.

Blushing, Hermione tugged at her shirt as quickly as she could, until her navel was once again hidden, then started trying to find an empty seat. It was easier said than done; the library was packed to the brim with finalists preparing for their exams, and Hermione had to make her way to the back of the room before she could finally sit down.

And that journey was even more arduous than the one before it.

The snickering, the glances to the side… as much as she tried to stare at the floor, Hermione couldn’t ignore it all. She tried to walk as fast as she could without it being obvious, anything to get out of the spotlight, but that only made her sweat more, pant more, made her breasts bounce until she became terrified they’d leap out of her top, so terrified she didn’t even notice her shirt was riding up again until it was too late…

Finally, Hermione sat down, and started to cry.

***

“So, how have you been feeling lately?”

“Good, I think,” Hermione replied hesitantly, “overall. Better.” And it wasn’t a lie, not this time, and Harper could tell.

“I’m really glad to hear that,” she said.

“I mean, things aren’t perfect-”

“They never are.”

“But I’ve been feeling better. More comfortable. More confident.”

“You look it!” Harper smiled, then laughed. “You know, siting there, right now, you’re just seem to radiate self-confidence. Self-love.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Harper, “really. Maybe you don’t feel that way all the time, nobody does, but that love is there now and it’s delightful to see.”

“It’s just…”

“Yes?”

There was a silence.

“I’ve gained weight.”

Another silence.

“Yes,” Harper said, slowly, “I had noticed that.”

More silence.

“Do you have any idea why you’ve gained weight?” Harper asked.

“Um… I’ve been eating a lot more.” Well, it was true.

“Because you’re stressed?”

“No, no, not _because_ I’m stressed. I eat when I’m stressed now, but that’s never _why_ I eat. I eat because… I like eating.”

“You’re sure?”

“Definitely.”

“Well,” Harper began, “you were pretty skinny to start with, and you’ve got a long way to go before you’re as big as me!” Harper laughed, and patted her gargantuan gut. It vibrated for several seconds after the impact “I’d say you’re alright.”

“Thanks.” Hermione nodded.

“Are you feeling anxious about your weight gain?”

“No.” Hermione paused. “Not generally anyway. I mean, I don’t mind it, in fact I kind of like it, it’s just…”

“Yes?”

And so Hermione told Harper what had happened at the library.

“That’s terrible,” Harper said.

“I know.”

“I don’t just mean what happened with your shirt, I mean how they reacted.”

“But I looked gross.”

“Firstly, that’s not true, not at all. Secondly, I thought you said you liked the extra weight?”

“Oh no,” Hermione protested, her face crimson, “not that part of it.”

“Really?”

Hermione paused again.

“Remember, I won’t share any of this with anyone,” Harper said.

“Ok,” Hermione muttered, shyly. “Well, to be honest… I do like it. All of it. A lot. And I gained it on purpose. Is that weird?”

“No, not at all. Not at all…” Harper gazed at the ceiling, and Hermione thought she looked lost in thought for some reason. Harper violently shook her head, making her double chin wobble, and looked at Hermione again. “So why do you think you felt gross in that moment?”

“Because they were all looking at me. Because they thought I was gross.”

“And we’ve established you shouldn’t care about what other’s think.”

“I know. It’s just…” Hermione trailed off.

“Hermione?”

“I’m so lonely.” Hermione started to cry again, even more than before. Breathing deeply, Hermione clumsily shuffled her chair forward and embraced the girl, and felt her bosom grow wet with tears.

***

That night, as she lay in bed failing to sleep, Hermione had an idea. It started when she noticed that her pyjamas, which were once so loose, were now a perfect fit, if a little snug around her hips. She’d grown into them.

So why not grow into something else?

At five-foot-four and one-hundred and forty pounds, Hermione would have to gain ten pounds before she had any right to call herself overweight. But term ended in a week, and there was no way she’d be able to gain ten pounds at home, not with her parents breathing down her neck. Hermione had to gain ten pounds in one week, or wait until next term to become overweight. And Hermione couldn’t wait.

So. One week.

And it just so happened that Oxmas formal was also one week away. Hermione hadn’t gone last year, the thought of all those people terrified her, but she was feeling more confident lately and she wasn’t going to let the incident at the library stop her, so this year, she resolved to go. And she’d need a dress.

So why not buy it a size or two too big?

She settled on it. Tomorrow, Hermione would buy the most gorgeous, beautiful figure hugging dress she could find, but make sure it was loose on her. That way, she’d have to gain ten pounds, to be able to fill out the dress. Wearing that dress, that dress that had been too big for her only a week prior, would make her feel incredibly confident, incredibly sexy, she was sure. Confident enough, maybe, to attend to Oxmas ball, and stuff herself with even more calories for good measure. Confident enough, maybe, to make friends there.

Hermione smiled, and drifted off into sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

The dress has been hanging over Hermione’s door for a week now. It was mildly annoying, as Hermione had to awkwardly brush it to the side every time she wanted to open the door, but it was worth the irritation. Hermione needed it there. A constant reminder of what she had to achieve. What she was going to achieve.

And now, one week later, Hermione hoped it would become a reminded of all she had achieved.

6pm, Wednesday night, and the moment of truth. If the dress fit, then Hermione had to have gained roughly ten pounds in a week. If not…

No. It would fit. It had to fit.

Once Week Seven ended, Hermione’s workload had become pretty much non-existent aside from a few classes here or there, which allowed her to devote nearly all her time to gaining. The change in her lifestyle was clear. If she’d been a glutton before, then now she was something more akin to a black hole, constantly drawing in all nearby edible matter: never stopping, never satisfied. It wasn’t that she didn’t get full; in fact, she was full almost constantly. The only time her poor stomach ever got any respite was one the walks to college and back, when it was her legs’ turn to feel overtaxed. The pain was worth it though, Hermione knew that. She wanted to gain, more than anything she’d ever wanted before, and no pain… Well, it went without saying.

So. The moment of truth. Would it fit?

Yes. Yes it would. Maybe a little too well, if such a thing was even possible.

Hermione practically skipped her way to the mirror to admire her new look. The dress was navy blue, and clung to her new curves like paint, following her skin into every new crevice, every new fold. Freshly thickened thighs filled out the skirt so well that the normally-flowy fabric there was practically sheer beneath all its frills. Plump, swollen breasts bulged out of the neckline and threatened to leap out at any moment. The only thing more likely to burst free of the frock was Hermione’s big, bouncy bottom, but Hermione barely even noticed that. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from her tummy.

The reason Hermione had fallen in love with this dress in particular was that it had a waistband, a glittery blue sash that wrapped tightly around the dress’s middle. Or at least, it was meant to. The moment Hermione finally managed to tug the dress past her midriff, the waistband shot down and came to rest comfortably underneath her belly. It wasn’t much of a surprise. As ever, Hermione’s belly had been the main recipient of any extra fluff she added to her frame, but the waistband made it look even larger (which, Hermione realised, was probably the opposite of what it was intended to do). The way it curved underneath her paunch in a U-shape seemed to outline her stomach, accentuating its size and making it look as if it stuck out even more. Her love handles benefitted even more: a new addition to Hermione’s body, only appearing in the last few days, they were still fairly modest in spite of their softness, but the way they hid Hermione’s waistband from view made them look massive. Even Hermione’s back fat, another recent addition, benefitted from the waistband, as it dug into the fold that was forming above her ass so tightly as to make both sides bulge outwards to an outrageous degree. Hermione didn’t mind. She grabbed the waistband and shook it, and watched her belly wobble alongside it. She smiled.

There was no doubt about it.

This dress made her look fat.

***

Oxford University has always upheld the proud tradition of having nonsensical traditions. There are a vast variety of these at Oxford: canteens must be called butteries, bills must be called batells, tortoises must be raced and students at Merton College must run backwards in a circle at 2am whenever the clocks go back. Nobody can quite remember how and why these traditions started, but nobody really cares. All that matters is that they are upheld, that they endure for future generations, something-something cultural heritage, you know?

Oxmas is one of these traditions. Unsatisfied with having Christmas on the 25th December like the rest of the planet, Oxford instead has Christmas on the last Wednesday of Michaelmas term, for no reason other than so students can give each other cards and gifts before they go home for the holidays. As such, not only do Oxford students have twice as much money as normal people, they also have twice as many Christmases, although unlike the former indicator of privilege, Hermione was not about to complain about the injustice of the latter. It gave her twice as many days to pig out on, after all.

The Oxmas dinner, or Oxmas formal as it is actually called due to Oxford’s aforementioned emphasis on innovation and obtuseness, is by far the biggest meal available to Oxford students. A set menu of three courses, with sides, and unlimited alcohol, and while the quality of the food varies between most formals, Oxmas formal was always reliably excellent.

And reliably fattening, of course.

Normally Hermione would be terrified of stepping into any room as packed as the great hall was that evening, but the knowledge that it would be helping her grow was enough to give Hermione the courage she needed. That, and her new body. For the first time in her appearance, Hermione felt proud of her appearance, and that made her feel good. So good, in fact, that the moment she stepped through the doors, Hermione realised that she was feeling the most confident she’d ever felt. And that made her do things she wouldn’t have dreamt of doing in public before. She smiled. She raised her head high. She started swaying her hips from side to side as she walked, until she found her spot at the table and plopped her plump bottom down on the bench.

It was a tighter fit than she expected. One of the many, many downsides of having to eat on a long bench for several hours is that there’s nothing separating you from the people on either side of you. Unused to her freshly flabby form, it was only after a few seconds that Hermione realised that her arse was spilling unto the laps of the people either side of her.

Cue stares.

Blushing, Hermione shuffled on the spot to try and squish it into her space. It was a lot harder than she expected, and when she finally succeeded her hips were being pressed in so far that she couldn’t move, let alone get comfortable.

And just like that, her confidence was gone.

“Sorry”, she muttered.

The people around her didn’t seem to notice she’d said anything. In fact, they seemed to have forgotten all about the arse-incident, and were absorbed in some conversation about somebody Hermione didn’t know who’d slept with somebody else Hermione didn’t know. Apparently, this was shocking.

“-and there was, like, no foreplay at all, she was just out the shower and he took right there and then!”

Cue laughter.

“Um… hi?”

The students turned to look at Hermione. She blushed again.

“I’m Hermione… I don’t think we’ve met.” The response was immediate.

“Oh, that’s a sweet name,” said the girl in front of Hermione “like in Harry Potter?”

Hermione got that a lot. She nodded.

“Oh my god, that’s so sweet,” the girl continued, “you know, it’s totally insane, I’ve never seen you around!”

Hermione also got that a lot.

“I’m Faera.”

“She was named after Zod’s henchwoman” said the boy on her left, brushing his dark, floppy fringe away from his eyes.

“Shuddup!” Faera jabbed him with her elbow. “It’s Icelandic, and you know it!” The boy shrugged his shoulders in comically exaggerated fashion, prompting Faera to leap on him, giggling, and grab him by the cheeks.

“Get a room, you two,” said the boy on Hermione’s right. At this point, Hermione feared being forgotten, and was tempted to just let it happen like she always did, but then she remembered: she was confident now. She was going to make friends.

“So Faera,” she said, “are you Icelandic?” Faera sat up again, seemingly confused.

“Oh, no,” she said, “my parents just like the name, I don’t know, I’m from London.” She paused, finally. “Well, Essex, actually. Beauchamp Roding, it’s a gorgeous little village, we have stables you know?”

“That’s… nice.”

“Anyway,” Faera continued, “I study law, and this,” she gestured to the floppy-haired boy, who Hermione guessed was her boyfriend, “is Barnaby.” Barnaby waved.

“I’m Hugh,” said the student on Hermione’s right, a big, burly boy who, in spite of his overabundance of testosterone, was failing terribly at growing a beard. The combination of his physique and his almost-ridiculously posh accent made Hermione fairly certain he played rugby.

“Hugh’s going to be Prime Minister,” said Faera, smirking.

“I am not!” Hugh protested, laughing, “just because I do PPE, come on!”

“And go to Brasenose.”

“That doesn’t mean anything!”

“I go to Brasenose” Barnaby interrupted.

“We all go to Brasenose, silly” said Faera, “and besides, you don’t do PPE.” She leaned in close to him once again. “You’re too clever for that.”

“And too gorgeous.” He smirked.

“Hey!” said Hugh, “I take offence at that!”

And on it went. Try as Hermione might to make herself heard again, from then on the conversation just left her behind. Occasionally she was asked her opinion on something or someone she had no clue about, and she’d respond with a simple yes or no as required, but that was the extent of her role in the interaction.

However, once the first course came, she stopped caring. Rich, creamy cauliflower soup, topped with chestnuts and truffle oil. As a side, freshly baked white bread, with a portion of Brasenose butter, which was made onsite and came served in the shape of the college crest. Ridiculously elaborate? Yes. But it tasted divine, and with how decadent the soup was there was no way it didn’t contain copious calories. Despite how big the bowl was, Hermione practically inhaled the whole thing in seconds, before mopping up all that was left with her bread and earning a few disproving looks in the process.

At this point, they didn’t bother her, however. Since the biscuit incident Hermione had learned to lose herself in eating, to ignore everything except the food in front of her and the taste on her tongue. It was a kind of blissful, gluttonous nirvana, and she couldn’t get enough of it.

Next, the main. Hermione had been vegetarian since turned fourteen and had no intention of changing that, which meant she’d be eating the nut roast, stuffed full of cranberries and sultanas and surrounded, in typical expensive English restaurant fashion, by a thick red wine jus. Hermione wouldn’t swap it for turkey any day. Not only was it delicious, but whereas meat is mostly protein, Hermione knew nuts contain one thing and one thing only: fat, and lots of it. The most satisfying thing about, it however, was how ridiculously filling it was. By the time she was done, Hermione’s stomach felt absolutely packed, which was satisfying and arousing all at the same time. The feeling didn’t stop her salivating at the prospect of more food, however. In fact, when Faera got full, Hermione jumped at the chance to finish off her nut roast as well, and even after all those calories she still couldn’t wait until desert.

But, as is traditional at Oxford formals, before desert, there had to come a speech. The college master, a bloated, red-faced old man who’d made his name writing for the Telegraph tapped his glass, and everyone stood to attention. Hermione was one of the last to get up; it was certainly harder than she remembered it being before she’d consumed a massive bowl of soup, three bread rolls and one-and-a-half nut roasts.

“Good evening everyone,” the master began, in a tone resembling that of a lawnmower, “and I’d like to start by reminding everyone why we’re all here. To celebrate the season of goodwill and the birth of the saviour, yes, but more than that, to celebrate another very successful year at Brasenose.”

On and on it went; some guff about how they were the future of Britain, how they would combat the ongoing moral decline of society, Hermione didn’t really pay attention. All she could think about was desert. Despite being packed to the brim, her stomach kept purring quietly in anticipation.

“And to conclude, I’d like to encourage you all to uphold the high standards of behaviour and academic excellence you’ve maintained thus far. And should you fail to do so, I’d like to remind you: I know the name of the applicant whose place you took. Every single one. Thank you.”

Finally. Not a moment too soon. After jamming her bottom back in her spot, Hermione could finally get on with her favourite part of every meal. Tonight’s desert was a white chocolate and wild berry “Bûche du Noël”. When she read about it on the menu, Hermione had absolutely no idea what it was, although the prospect of white chocolate was always enough to get her excited. As it turned out, a “Bûche du Noël” was what would be called a chocolate log outside of high society. Normally Hermione always found chocolate logs sickly whenever she was allowed by her parents to indulge in them at Christmastime, but the wild berries added a pleasant tartness that counteracted this, resulting in what was the best desert Hermione had ever tasted. Admittedly, the list of competition was not especially long, but that hardly mattered as she lost herself in its sweetness. When Faera once again failed to finish her plate, Hermione was only to eager for seconds. This new crowd seemed shocked she could put away so much, but Hermione didn’t care anymore. Besides, she thought, the amount I can eat now is nothing compared to how much I’ll be able to eat in a year…

“Well,” said Barnaby, “I, for one, am stuffed.”

“Yeah,” said Hugh, rubbing his abdomen, “that’s just you.” He smirked. “Lightweight.”

“I don’t know if you’ve got anything to be proud of, Hugh,” said Faera, “I think Hermione here put you to shame!”

Hermione blushed, but with embarrassment rather than shame. If anything, she felt kind of aroused.

“I’m a growing girl!” she said, laughing.

Where did that come from? Did she really just say that? What came over here? For a brief moment, Hermione just wished she could teleport away, but then her three new acquaintances starting laughing too, and all was right again.

“Add me on Facebook,” said Faera, when it was time to leave, “you’re a great laugh, Hermione.” Hermione knew Facebook was primarily for old people, but most Oxford students seemed to use it and it alone for some reason, so Hermione promised she would. Maybe, finally, after all this time, she had made some friends.

It was after Faera and her friends left that Hermione was approached by another stranger.

“Um, hi,” he said, shyly. He was a short, blond boy, very skinny but with eyes like an anime character and the face of an 80s rock star.

“Hi,” said Hermione, back.

Silence.

***

“I was sat next to you back there,” he continued, awkwardly, “on your left.”

Hermione nodded. This had to be the other boy she’d accidently sat on. She hadn’t really noticed him after that brief embarrassment; he’d never spoken.

“I’m sorry, this is really creepy, I’ve been really creepy-”

“You really haven’t, don’t worry.”

“It’s just… I’m shy, and… I think you’re really cute.”

More silence. Hermione didn’t know what to say.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you can forget about it.” The boy made to leave, but Hermione placed her hand on his arm.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Why do you think I’m cute?”

“Well,” the boy spluttered, “because you are, and because… you’re really confident. Like, you just seem so proud, so unashamed of who you are, and… and I think that’s really hot.”

Yet more silence.

“I’m Hermione.”

“I know. Oh, wait, sorry, that definitely sounded creppy, I jusy overheard you back there-”

“It’s fine.”

“Okay. I’m Mark.”

“It’s nice to meet you Mark.”

“Thanks.

The longest silence of all.

“So,” Hermione said slowly, “do you want to hang out?”


	5. Chapter 5

“What in the heavens?”

Nobody still said that, not since it finally became legal to publish _Lady Chatterly’s Lover_. Nobody, Hermione thought, except her mother.

“What have you done to yourself?”

For all her verbosity, Hermione’s mother was not one for obtuseness.

“It’s just the Freshman Fifteen, mother,” said Hermione, with her face towards the ground. The flab beneath her chin, hidden when she faced forwards, spread out as if in shame.

“The what?”

“It’s an American thing, mother, look it up on whatever it is you use, FLOP or-”

“FOP, yes.”

“Anyway look up the Freshman Fifteen, it’s perfectly normal.” And it might have been. The Freshman Forty, however, decidedly wasn’t, and Hermione knew it. She wasn’t lying, she reminded herself, she couldn’t lie, not when her entire body was covered in soft, pudgy evidence. She was just… understating the truth.

“But how,” Hermione’s mother shook her head, “how could you let this happen?”

How? How had it happened? What could Hermione possibly tell her mother? She’d played this scenario out in her head countless times since she’d first decided to start gaining, but now the moment had come she was speechless. How to even begin? Hermione started to sweat. Her chubby cheeks turned red. Then, finally…

“It’s because of society.”

“What?” Hermione’s mother cried.

“Society, you know, we live in it. And it’s becoming increasingly sedentary, and fast food is constantly rising in popularity, and with all of these sociological factors at play weight gain is quickly becoming an inevitable part of modern adulthood.”

And breathe.

“And that,” Hermione’s mother began, placing her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, “is the best answer you’re going to give me?”

Hermione nodded.

“It’s okay. You’re a very talented girl, Hermione, you can sort this out.”

“I’ll try…”

“You can, you will, I’d expect no less of you.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry, mother. I’m sorry.”

And the worst part was, she wasn’t lying. Hermione could never lie to her mother.

***

“Reply, reply, come on…”

Hermione sat cross-legged her bed clutching her phone, her elbows resting on her fluffy thighs. She’d sent Faera five messages since the vacation began. All on read. No reply.

None from Barnaby either. Or Hugh.

Or Mark.

Hermione scratched her chubby chin. What was she doing wrong? Why couldn’t she make people like her? Was it, woe betide, because she was-

No. That couldn’t be true. Hermione couldn’t bear to think of that possibility.

And yet…

Hermione gazed down at her tummy. Normally soft and spherical, when Hermione sat it moulded itself into a classic double belly, one giant fold forming in her flesh to completely hide her belly button. Hermione grabbed her lower roll and felt in between her fingers. Usually that aroused her, but with these thoughts in her head…

She shook the roll up and down. It jiggled for several seconds after she let go. Even that didn’t turn her on. All of a sudden, the fat no longer felt beautiful or sexy. It was just… there. Just another part of her body, no more special than her fingernails or the mole on her left hip. There was no getting rid of it now. And it might have ruined her life forever.

No. That couldn’t be it. Hermione lacked social skills long before she’d ever gotten fat. Logically, that had to be the reason nobody had replied. They weren’t repulsed by Hermione’s flab, at least not necessarily, they were just uninterested in her. Or they’d forgotten about her.

This realisation made Hermione no happier.

***

Three weeks.

Three weeks since Hermione had come home for the holidays. Three weeks of her mother’s snide remarks about her weight every time she bit into a snack. Three weeks of her father poking her belly and joking that she looked like the Michelin Man or one of the people in Wall-E. Three weeks of her parents.

And in all that time, Hermione had only grown larger.

For all their criticism of her weight, Hermione’s parents were not the type to forgo the copious cookies and sweet treats traditional at Christmastime. They were far too proudly traditional for that, and for the first week or so at least, Hermione was only too happy to take advantage of this. She imagined she’d have to stop gaining over the holidays, but instead she found herself continuing to deliberately pack on the pounds and stuff her face with sugar. In fact, it was even easier than before, now that she wasn’t having to buy her own food, or waste calories walking to and from classes.

That was, until her parents started to get to her. There were only so many do-you-really-need-thats and shouldn’t-you-be-taking-better-care-of-yourselfs Hermione could take before the mere thought of eating in front of her parents was enough to make her sweat. Hermione tried asking her mother to stop commenting, but to no avail. She was just trying to help after all, trying to make sure Hermione kept herself healthy, to make sure she didn’t fall apart into a mess. It was her duty as mother, the least she could do.

And so, after two weeks Hermione reluctantly made the call to stop gaining weight until the holidays were over. Unfortunately, she quickly discovered she didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Hermione’s appetite had ballooned along with her belly, to the point that she could scarcely go two hours without snacking on _something_. She tried to deprive herself at first, to stick to three meals a day, but that was far harder than she imagined. Her stomach would growl in protest, her tummy would tremble, and the aches… Hermione had never known hunger pangs before, not like the ones she experienced that December. So Hermione had to snack, she needed gingerbread, cupcakes, brownies. Ad day by day, the amount she needed seemed to go up and up and up…

Just like her weight.

A few days before Christmas, Hermione was absent-mindedly playing with her belly before bed, jiggling it up and down, when she noticed something. As she was kneading it, she realised that, for the first time, one hand was no longer sufficient to grab all of her flab. She needed two now. It was that big. And it was only going to get bigger…

There was nothing she could do to stop it.

***

After realising how out of hand her appetite had become, Hermione once again gave into gluttony. It was different now, though. No longer was she eating with a purpose in mind, that purpose being to get fat. Now, excessive consumption was simply a need, and not in a sexy way, just something that Hermione had to do to stay alive; no different to brushing her teeth.

And so, she continued to grow, continued to balloon. Her clothes grew tighter. Her butt grew wider. Her belly grew bigger, until it started to bulge out over her waistbands and completely hide them from view.

By Christmas she was 163 lbs.

And still hungry.

And so, on Christmas Day, Hermione came eat more food than she’d ever eaten a single day in her life. The day started innocuously enough, just one too many pieces of toasted brioche, but from then on the food kept on coming. So many nuts and cookies and candies, just lying around the house so that she couldn’t go anywhere without finding something to munch on. And no matter how stuffed she got, she just kept on eating. The cruel comments kept coming, and she kept on eating.

Then dinner itself. Another nut roast. The portion was smaller than the one she’d had at Oxford, but she’d already eaten so much before hand it felt ten times as big as it really was. And then deserts. Three desserts, actually: a Christmas cake, a yule log, and Hermione’s mother’s signature gingerbread house.

Hermione had two pieces of all three.

And still she didn’t stop, she couldn’t stop, there were so many sweets, so much to eat, all of it had to get in her belly no matter how much it protested, no matter how much it hurt.

Her body got hotter and hotter. Her skin got redder and redder. Her tummy got tighter and tighter, and then…

“Hermione!” Cue gasps.

Hermione had just experienced her first button pop.

And instantly, the tears began to fall.

***

Hermione had scrambled up the stairs to her bedroom and still the tears were falling. Why did this have to happen now, of all times? Why did it have to happen at all? Why did she have no self-control?

“Why is it everything I do for myself it always ends up hurting me?”

Her curves didn’t feel sexy any more. She felt bulky, over-inflated, a puffy clone of her former self that had no hope of ever slimming down.

She peeled the ruins shorts from her body, now drenched in sweat. Went she bent up, she noticed that her shirt had ridden up her belly, displaying the consequences of her overconsumption; as if the stripes didn’t make her look fat already. Her belly had recently been beginning to hang slightly, but it had perked upwards as it had swollen. The softness and the jiggliness Hermione had loved so much had vanished, replaced with an unbearable tightness. Hermione poked her stomach. It hurt.

It hurt.

Hermione had never felt her stomach hurt like this. Her shame and sex drive had numbed her to the pain before, but no she was upstairs it suddenly came crashing forwards all at once, and it was agonising, like a million crabs instead her gut all crawling over one another to escape to the crushing pressure… Hermione wanted to puke.

And then her phone buzzed.

“Hi Hermione,” the message read, “I’m really sorry I hadn’t messaged sooner but I’ve had a lot going on. Merry Christmas!”

Hermione smiled. Mark had remembered her.


	6. Chapter 6

In spite of their flaws, it could never be said that Hermione’s parents didn’t love her. Indeed, that may well have been their biggest flaw.

“Have you got your room keys?” Hermione’s mother asked, stopped down her daughters height with a hand on her shoulder.

“Yes, mother,” Hermione replied. Her mother leant in closer.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Mother, you saw me pick them up from lodge.” And like that, Hermione’s mother sprang back upright like a catapult. Hermione swore she heard a clicking noise.

“Well, no need to get snippy.”

“Mother, I wasn’t being snippy!”

“Well I think-

“I’m sorry.” Hermione looked the ground.

“It’s alright darling. I know you don’t mean it.” And Hermione found herself being kissed on the forehead. She forced a smile.

“Where do these need to go?” Hermione’s dad had entered the hallway, carrying a large cardboard box, filled to the brim with kitchenware.

“Brian, you’ve already done this once,” his wife remarked coldly, “can’t you remember? Third floor, room number five.”

“Room number four” said Hermione, stifling a groan.

“Right, room number four, like I said.” Hermione turned to her father.

“Are you sure I can’t help you carry anything?”

“Nope,” he said, awkwardly adjusting his grip, “I’ve got this just fine.”

“But they’re really heavy-”

“Exactly, now don’t you worry girl.”

“You should learn do what I do, Hermione,” Hermione’s mother said, “just let your father do everything!” And, finding this hilarious, Hermione’s parents both starting guffawing at once.

Hermione failed to see the humour.

***

“So do you hate them?”

“Not… exactly.” Hermione balanced her head on her pudgy fist. “It’s complicated.” Harper nodded, her chins merging together into a single sensual whole.

“Isn’t it always?” Harper chuckled. Her entire body wobbled with the motion, and once again Hermione found herself lost in her counsellor’s flab. Her blubbery beauty was so distracting that the most Hermione could muster was a nod in response.

“I think the better question might be,” Harper continued, “how do your parents make you feel?”

Hermione’s mind went blank. Were there even any words for how she felt about her parents? She didn’t hate them, she couldn’t hate them, but she wished she could, wished she did. It’d make things easier. That wasn’t to say she loved them, hell, Hermione wasn’t even sure she _liked_ them, they were just… there. In her way.

“It’s okay if you want to move on,” Harper said. Slowly, she leaned forward, and placed a her hand on Hermione’s shoulder. Hermione noticed how the motion made her counsellor’s upper and lower belly both flattened like pizza dough, spreading outwards and making her look even wider. The fold between the two halves of her gut grew deeper too, so deep that swallowed some of the fabric of Harper’s flowery blue dress and pulled it tight around her stomach. With the fabric now so sheer, Hermione could see that leaning forward also caused a new roll to appear above Hermione’s belly, turning her double belly into a triple; it was small, but all the more adorable for it, and Hermione imagined that, with time, it could come rival its fellow belly rolls for size…

And then it came to her.

“Small.”

“I’m sorry?” Harper said, leaning back.

“Small,” Hermione continued, “they make me feel small.”

“I think I understand,” said Harper, “that’s probably a really good word for it.”

“Yeah.”

That was the most Hermione felt like saying at that particular moment. Harper said nothing. And so, silence. Too much silence.

“I nearly did it again.”

More silence.

“Right,” Harper began, slowly, “can you tell me a bit more about that?”

“It was… a few days before Christmas,” Hermione said, her voice softer, “I was just… laying awake, I couldn’t sleep, and somehow I knew that, if I got up, I’d immediately sneak downstairs and grab a knife from the kitchen. I knew I wouldn’t be able to control it. It was… terrifying.”

“Okay.” Harper paused. “What made you… not get out of bed?”

“I don’t know… I really don’t. At that point I really didn’t have anything to look forward to. I think I was just scared, and that stopped me. I couldn’t even move, like I was paralysed, because it felt like to much movement would make me get up and… well…”

“It’s okay,” said Harper, and as ever her voice soothed Hermione. “It’s really normal, a lot of people feel like that in those moments. But you do have things to look forward to.”

“I do _now_.”

“You did then.” Hermione apologised.

“I just meant that I’m feeling better now. Something happened, on Christmas Day, actually… It gave me something to look forward to.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better, but please don’t think that life was ever hopeless for you. It wasn’t.”

“But I have no control.”

“You feel small, you said it yourself. But are you small?” Hermione smiled.

“Definitely not.”

“Exactly. There’s always reasons to live, Hermione. _Reasons_ , plural. You lose some, you gain others, but you always have some and there’s always more than one. Usually plenty more than one. It’s just very hard to see all those reasons sometimes.

“Right.” Hermione was unconvinced.

***

Right.

Here it was.

The moment she’d been waiting for.

Hermione’s first date with Mark. Her first date, period.

But what to wear? Hermione was tempted to try the same dress she wore at Oxmas formal, but she knew there was no way she’d be able to pull it past her butt anymore. Besides, Mark had said he’d wanted this to be a casual thing anyway, since he thought that’d make it more comfortable for him, and Hermione believed that was best for her too.

So. What to wear? Most of Hermione’s wardrobe no longer fit her properly, if at all, and she hadn’t had the opportunity to buy new clothes yet. All she had was her sweats, and those didn’t exactly flatter her figure. Hermione emptied her entire wardrobe onto the floor, desperate for something, _anything_ to wear. She panicked. Maybe it’d better to call the whole thing off?

 _No_. That was her mother thinking, Hermione realised. Then, suddenly, that realisation triggered another.

The outfit didn’t need to fit her properly. It only needed to fit her.

Hermione had never worn especially revealing clothing before; aside from the fact that her mother would never let her show too much skin, Hermione had never felt confident enough in her body to be able to herself. Of course, now she was away from her parents, Hermione was loving her chub once again, so why couldn’t she flaunt it a little? Mark didn’t seem to mind it, after all.

That settled it. Hermione picked out a pair of denim shorts that she’d bought last term, and was pleased to find that they still slid over her thighs, albeit with much greater difficulty than before. Hermione didn’t mind though: the extra tightness squeezed her plump legs in such a way that they puffed outward slightly, making them look even bigger than before. And that was to say nothing of how huge these shorts made her arse look! Hermione turned away from her mirror and stamped a single chubby foot. She could see it! She could actually see her arse jiggle in these they were so skintight! Hermione loved the way they made her look, and she hoped Mark would too.

Now for a top. It was too hot for the jumpers and fluffy GAP hoodies Hermione had grown up wearing, so it was time to crack out her tee shirts. Having had the foresight to buy a few in larger sizes the term before, Hermione did have some shirts that would fit her, but most of them were ugly shades of grey or white and therefore reserved only for emergencies, and besides, they didn’t exactly fit the “confident and sexy” vibe Hermione was aiming for. Instead, after a few tries, she found the perfect top: a turquoise sleeveless number than didn’t quite extend over her tummy, hiding her navel but nothing else. If other girls could wear crop tops, she figured, why couldn’t she? Sure, this hadn’t exactly been a crop top when she first brought it, but that knowledge only made her feel fatter, more confident, more beautiful. Plus, the top’s lack of sleeves meant that Hermione’s flabby forearms were fully on show, which she was eager to display in public for the first time. Smiling, she lifted one arm up, as if flexing non-existent muscles, and shook it with her free hand. Even after she let go, it just kept on wobbling, for what felt like forever. She could even make it happen without touching them, just by flapping her arms back and forth. Hermione loved it, she loved every inch of fat on her body.

Now, to get ready to leave. Keys? Check. Hair? Brushed. Make-up? Hermione hadn’t worn make up since her November, she hadn’t felt the need now that her cheeks were naturally plump and her face was naturally round. Sure she had a double chin, an exceptionally big one for a girl her weight she thought, but Hermione wouldn’t exactly have been able to hide that even if she’d have wanted to. She thought it made her look pretty. Angelic.

Hermione gazed at herself in the mirror one last time before leaving. Any doubts about her appearance had vanished. Of course she could pull off an outfit like that. She was a big girl now. A big, 170 lb woman.

***

As she waddled down to the lodge, their arranged rendezvous, Hermione began to have doubts. Why the hell had she shown this much skin? She loved her body, sure, but there was no way Mark did. He’d probably think she looked fat and ugly, he probably already thought that, from the moment they met. He was just settling for Hermione, that’s all, settling for her because he couldn’t find anyone else to go out with, and even then he’d probably realise after the first date that he’d be better off _single_ than with Hermione, because she was so boring, so fat…

Probably.

When Hermione arrived at the lodge Mark was already there.

“Hermione! You look…”

_Bigger? Fatter? Hideous?_

“More beautiful than I remember, and that’s saying something.” He winked. Hermione blushed, racking her brain for a witty comeback, but none came.

“So,” Mark continued, “G&Ds?”

Of all Oxford’s myriad traditions, G&Ds might be the most peculiar, in that is by far the most mundane. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this ice cream bar; indeed, the most notable thing about it is the fact that it has two locations in the city. Compared to chipping off bits of Keble’s masonry or running backwards in a circle, the tradition of visiting G&Ds at least once a term is hardly outlandish. And yet, why this particular ice cream bar? Why not the numerous other, similarly-priced ice cream bars in city? G&Ds is no more remarkable than any of them. However, perhaps the most puzzling question of all is, why must there be a tradition involving an ice cream bar at all?

Hermione had wondered these things before, but with the prospect of ice cream on the table, she didn’t much care about them.

By the time the couple had arrived at G&Ds (the one on Clarendon Street to be precise, which Mark said had a better atmosphere), Hermione was feeling vastly more confident. There had been plenty of long silences on the walk there, sure, but they weren’t awkward in the slightest. Rather, they were intimate. It felt, to Hermione at least, like the pair were communicating silently somehow, like they each had so much they were to afraid to say, and so just sent other this wonderful warming sensation.

And then he held her hand.

He held her hand.

Squeezed it, not hard, just… tenderly.

Best of all though, was the way he looked at her belly. When Hermione first noticed it she blushed, then began to sweat as the thought that he might have been judging her sprung to mind. But there was no disgust in Mark’s eyes. He didn’t even feel the need to look away when he realised Hermione had spotted his looks. He just smiled, and they talked, but he kept glancing it at, watching it bounce up and down, up and down, watching her top ride higher and higher…

He liked it.

Hermione was certain.

She knew men like Mark existed, of course, but meeting one? It always seemed too much to hope for.

“Better give him a show,” she thought, smugly, as they came up to order.

“Have whatever you like,” Mark said, “price is no object!” Hermione wasn’t about to turn him down.

“I’ll have an extra large waffle with five scoops of caramel ice cream and chocolate sauce and whipped cream sprinkles and a wafer, and a tub with two scoops of raspberry sorbet and two scoops of mango.” And breathe.

The clerk seemed taken aback, but he quickly scurried off to get Hermione’s order.

“The second tub?” Mark asked, grinning.

“As a palate cleanser. Don’t want to mix the sweet stuff and the sharp stuff.”

Another silence.

“So… hungry huh?”

“You bet!”

One waffle and one tub of sorbet later, and Hermione was feeling full. Not stuffed, not by any means, but very, very full, and the cold, heavy sensation in her stomach was blissful. She could have shut her eyes and fallen asleep if she could stop looking at the boy in front of her. Beneath all the awkwardness and the scruffiness and the nerdiness, he was really was incredibly handsome, in a Christian Slater sort of way. His cheekbones seemed chiselled from granite, and his slimness only made Hermione feel bigger and more beautiful.

They hadn’t talked much as they ate. They’d just watched each other, and that was enough.

“It’s chuck-a-cow time!”

Hermione was confused.

“They do it after eight,” Mark explained, “everyone who ordered gets three shots, if you get it in the hoop you win a free scoop.”

A tall girl in her late twenties stood up, and said “How’s about I go first this time?”

“Alright Lizzie,” the clerk groaned, “let’s get you out the way first.” He then handed her a very fat, very round cow plushie, about this size of a basketball. She moved to one end of the shop, stood behind a piece of tape on the floor, and tossed the cow straight into the hoop at the other end.”

“Chocolate,” said Lizzie, “now.” And off the clerk went, muttering something about basketballers.

“Come on!” said Mark, tugging on Hermione’s arm, “You’re a hungry girl after all!” Hermione would never normally have done anything like this in public for fear of embarrassing herself, but somehow Mark made it all okay. In fact, as she queued, she was excited for her three shots at the hoop! More ice cream, after all.

Then finally, her turn to shoot.

Miss.

Miss.

Miss.

Hermione felt a little deflated.

“Don’t worry,” said Luke, “you can have mine.”

“But what if you-” Hermione never finished that sentence. The cow was already though the hoop.

“Flavour?” Mark asked clearly very pleased with himself. Hermione picked honeycomb. Her favourite. Hermione was only too eager to tuck in, she was practically drooling, but before she could start she was hit with a question she never expected to hear.

“Hermione… Are you gaining weight on purpose?”


	7. Chapter 7

Well.

That was awkward.

“Oh I’m sorry,” said Mark, panicking, “I’ve offended you haven’t I? Oh god, I’m so sorry, so sorry, I’ll just go-”

“Mark?”

“I’m so sorry, really,” Mark continued, already on his feet, “so sorry, I didn’t mean it-”

“You’re right.”

Mark sat down.

“Really?”

Hermione nodded, not quite believing what was happening.

“Wow. Wow. Okay. That’s… incredible. I didn’t really think people like you existed, off the internet that is.”

Hermione never thought people like Mark really existed off the internet.

“Can we talk about this later?” she whispered, her voice somehow sounding both meek and excited at once.

“Back at my place?”

“Sure,” replied Hermione, doing her best to sound laconic. She couldn’t exactly turn him away after that revelation, could she?

***

“You seem a lot more open than usual, Hermione,” said Harper, her face illuminated with a smile Hermione had never seen before. She’d seen Harper smile before, of course, not like this, not so broadly, with the tips of her lips pressing into her plump cheeks and squashing them outwards to make her chubby face even more cherubic. Hermione hoped her smile would look the same one day.

“And now you’ve gone quiet again.” Harper laughed, making her belly bounce. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s nothing,” Hermione said, “I just… get distracted.”

“By him?”

“By him.” It was half true. It had four weeks since Hermione’s first date with Mark, and although on this occasion it was her admiration for her adorably obese counsellor that had caught her attention, since that evening in the ice cream parlour Hermione had frequently found herself lost in thoughts of Mark: during classes, during study sessions, at night…

“He’s just… so wonderful,” Hermione sighed, “so supportive.” He’s everything I could ever want. More than I could ever dream to have.” Harper’s smile straightened out.

“Do you mind if ask you to clarify what you mean by that?”

“I mean, he’s so polite, and charming, handsome-”

“Yes, yes, I know, and I think that’s fantastic, I do. I was just wondering what you meant when you said he was more than you could ever dream to have.” Hermione fell silent, taken aback.

“I don’t know,” she said at last, “I’d just never really thought about meeting somebody like him. Not until I did.”

“I still don’t follow. I know Oxford is full of posh twats, but you must have at least _some_ kind people in the past, even if you weren’t that close to them.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but none of them were nice to me.”

“I know it might seem that way, but I doubt that’s really true.”

“I guess not… I guess what I really mean is that none of them were nice to me like Mark is.”

“None of them showed romantic interest in you. None of them until Mark.”

“Yes.” Hermione had never been able to pinpoint why she was so fond of Mark, in fact she’d rarely thought about it, but Harper had put it perfectly, unbelievably perfectly. The moment of realisation was sudden, violent and blissful all at once. “That’s exactly it.”

“But he makes you happy?”

“Definitely.”

“I can tell.” Harper smiled again. “He clearly means a lot you already.”

“Yeah, a lot...” Hermione felt herself sighing again, feeling even more like a cliché than she did the first time, “I know it’s sudden but he’s already the best thing to ever happen to me.”

“That good?” Still smiling, Harper raised an eyebrow.

“Look,” Hermione said, “I know it sounds crazy, I know I sound a Disney Princess, it’s just… we’re made for each other.”

“Sounding more like a Disney Princess by the second…”

“Okay, okay, I don’t know, it’s just that… he’s made me happy.”

Harper’s smile vanished once again.

“Sorry, I’m confused,” she said, playing with her double chin in her pudgy fingers, “do you mean to say ‘he makes’ you happy?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Right.”

There was a long silence. They were common in Hermione’s counselling sessions, but somehow this one felt different.

“Well, we’re coming to the end of your session,” Harper continued at last, “but in the last fifteen minutes there was something I wanted to talk to you about.” Hermione nodded, feeling her own double chin fold over. “Do you remember, when we first met last term, I asked you if you could make a list of your plans, your ambitions?”

“Yes, I made a list.”

“And you never really told me about it, which is fine, I was just wondering if the list has expanded since then.” Hermione felt perplexed.

“Should it have?”

“Not necessarily, it doesn’t need to.”

“Well, it hasn’t.”

“That’s okay.” Harper leaned back, her belly bulging even further outwards and pushing her dress up her thighs. “I take it you’re satisfied with the goals you have?”

“I guess.” Hermione paused. “Actually, very. I’m very satisfied. I enjoy working towards them, and I’m confident I can achieve them.”

“So you don’t feel that you need any more goals to work towards?”

“No, no,” Hermione said quickly, “definitely not.”

“You sound unsure…”

“I’m not unsure, no, not at all.”

“Okay…”

“I just don’t want to think about that stuff now I’m happy.”

***

So.

The moment of truth.

The most important moment of her life, Hermione thought.

“Are these too tight?” asked Mark, gesturing the ropes currently binding Hermione’s naked body to the swivel chair in her room. “I’ve never done this before.”

“They’re fine, Mark. Really.” Hermione giggled.

“Right. Okay.” Mark took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, it’s just this is a big deal for me, you know?”

“I feel the same. But I’m so happy this is happening.”

“Me too tubbo,” Mark replied, planting a soft kiss on Hermione’s squishy cheeks, “me too.” He paused, clearly nervous. And you’ve been such a good tubbo!” Hermione giggled.

“You think so?”

“Of course! You’re barely recognisable now from when I first met you-”

“And I’d already started gaining then-”

“-and now look at you! Look at you! Look at your thighs!” Mark gave them a light slap, and Hermione felt the vibrations all the way up to her crotch. “So thick, so jiggly.” Mark began stroking them, up and down, up and down. “So doughy. Like you.” Hermione blushed.

“You see how they touch all the way to my knees now?”

“I had noticed.” Mark laughed. “Just like I noticed your boobs.” Slowly, Mark moved his hand up Hermione’s sides, feeling every curve, every crevice, until he reached her breasts. “Your plump, swollen, boobs.” He lifted them up and let them fall. “I love how saggy they are.”

“So do I…”

“They’re just pure flab,” Mark continued, carefully caressing her breasts, “and I love how soft they are. But I think I feel them getting harder.”

“You may be right.” Hermione closed her eyes, blocking out everything except Mark, everything except his hands on her fat.

“You want to know what the best part is though?”

“I think I can guess…”

Mark moved his hands all the way down to Hermione’s hips, and slowly brought them forward, cupping them around the underside of Hermione’s overhang.

Oh yes. She had an overhang now.

“I love your belly,” Mark said, stroking it gently, tracing it’s stretchmarks. “And, maybe that’s crap, but I can’t say anymore. I love it too much.”

“More…” Mark started kneading the flesh; feeling it flow and fold around his fingers was heavenly.

“I love it.” Suddenly, he started shaking the whole blubbery mass, up and down, up and down… “I love it, I love it, I love it-”

“God!”

And Hermione came.

“Wow. Okay.” Mark stepped back. “ I didn’t think I was that good.”

“You are… You and my fat.”

“You love being fat, huh?”

“So much. You know, I hit 200lbs yesterday?”

“No way.”

“Well, 204.”

“But it’s not enough.”

“Never.”

“Well then,” said Mark, “You need fattening up. So I guess it’s time.” He reached for a nearby muffin. “Time for your first feeding.”

“Oh Mark-” He put a finger to her lips.

“Shush. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is sit there and let me spoil you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Heading home for the Easter vacation, Hermione felt on top of the world. She was happier than she’d ever been, not to mention fatter than she’d ever been, and she had the most wonderful boyfriend she could ever ask for supporting her in everything she did. Everything, she thought, was finally perfect, and nothing could ever change that.

As a student of literature, Hermione should have recognised this sensation as an example of what the early Greek dramatists called “hubris”. Subsequent nemesis was inevitable.

“We need to talk, Hermione.”

And there it was.

“Now, I don’t want you to think we’re being mean,” Hermione’s mother said, “but me and your father have noticed that you’ve been having… problems lately. Rather… weighty problems.”

Oh no, she did _not_ just say that, Hermione thought.

“Clearly you’ve been having problems with your self-control-”

“Mother-”

“Let me finish darling, you’ve been having problems with your self-control so we thought that we’d help you out, take the temptations away from you if that makes sense.”

No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening…

“There’s not going to be any nasty foods in the house anymore, so you won’t ever have to worry about letting yourself go. Trust me darling, if your metabolism is anything like mine all that weight will be gone before you know it!”

That was exactly what Hermione was afraid of.

***

As it turns out, Hermione’s mother hadn’t been entirely honest when she said the house would be free of all junk food.

No. The truth was far worse.

In the lowest depths of Debenhams, somewhere with the apple corers and mango splitters and those TVs selling you JML tat, you may find an item called a fridge safe. A fridge safe is just like a regular combination safe, only it’s made of extremely cheap plastic and will fit inside a fridge. It can be used to keep children safe from food they aren’t old enough to know they’re allergic to, to keep packed lunches from thieving co-workers, or, more alarmingly, to stop starving students from obtaining essential sustenance.

So no. The chocolate, the cheese, the cakes, they were still around the house, still available to everyone who wasn’t named after a forgotten Shakespeare character. Hermione’s father would still have his Maltesers, her mother would still have her cheese toasties, but Hermione would just have salads. And more salads. And maybe, if she was especially good, zero-fat yoghurt.

The worst thing about the safe, however, was the plastic used to make it. Translucent, so that all Hermione could see all the treats she craved taunting her every time she opened the fridge. Fragile, so that Hermione knew she could easily smash the safe open and grab the goodies inside were it not for the fact that she could never hide the evidence from her parents. It was as if the safe had been designed specifically to cause as much anguish to Hermione as possible, though she knew that, judging by the shoddiness of its assembly, nowhere near that amount of thought had gone into the product.

So, Hermione’s diet continued, uninterrupted. No cheat days, no little treats every now and again, just leaves and greens and celery. Hermione hated celery.

***

“183?”

“That’s what it says,” Hermione said sheepishly, peering over her belly at the scales.

“But you were 205 before the vac!” said Mark.

“I know.”

It was only twenty pounds, but it might as well have been two hundred. Though she was still overweight, and still much, much bigger than when she started, Hermione had never felt thinner. When she’d first hit 180, she’d been ecstatic: her thighs felt thick and juicy, her breasts felt full and plump, and her belly felt fat and heavy. But her body had developed so much further since then, become so much more beautiful, so returning to 180 was a devastating downgrade. Now, Hermione felt deflated: her breasts no longer overspilled her bras, her thighs seemed as thin as they had been before her hated thigh gap disappeared, and her belly felt empty even when she was stuffed.

And she was stuffed. That was the worst part. She knew Mark want to weigh her as soon as term resumed, and she’d been dreading the moment ever since her diet started. What if he was upset? Or angry? What if he didn’t want to date her anymore? So, Hermione had stuffed herself silly in advance, desperate to be as heavy as she could be by the time of the weigh-in. She knew, even as she was doing it, that there was no way she could completely erase the damage so fast, no way she could fit twenty pounds of food in her gut. She knew, and she did it anyway. Mitigation was the most she could hope for.

And, from the looks of things, it hadn’t even been that effective.

“I’m so sorry, Mark.”

“What have you got to be sorry for?”

“For getting thin.” Mark grabbed her flabby belly from behind and jiggled it.

“You call this thin?” He smiled, and kissed her on the cheek. Hermione blushed.

“It’s thinner than you would’ve liked, you can admit it. It’s okay to be angry.” Mark stepped back, and Hermione turned to face him.

“I’m not angry,” he began, “I’m just disappointed.”

Hermione had been hoping for a more original response, something more romantic maybe. Though perhaps the phrase was fitting: nothing could define this day more than disappointment.

“Besides,” Mark smiled, “it wasn’t even really your fault. I know my greedy little piggy could’ve gained fifty pounds over the vac if she’d been allowed!”

“That’s a lot though…”

“For other girls, maybe. Not for you.” Mark slapped his girlfriend’s gut, and Hermione felt it vibrate all over. Somehow, even the vibrations felt different after her weight loss: looser, less bouncy. Diluted.

Hermione stared into Mark’s eyes.

“I want to gain it back, Mark. I want to gain it back and then some. I promise I’ll get fatter for you.”

“You don’t have to promise me anything,” Mark replied, embracing her, “I know you’ll do it. I believe in you.” They hugged for what seemed like an eternity: Mark’s embraces were also soft and comforting, but now, for the first time in ages, Hermione imagined she could feel his touch on her bones, and no matter how much she tried to focus on the warmth of her boyfriend’s body she couldn’t block that knowledge from her mind. And then, finally, it ended. They stepped apart.

“So, here’s an idea,” said Mark, smirking. “How about we put you on a new diet? A different diet? My diet.”

Hermione smiled. She couldn’t say no to that, could she?

***

Mark’s diet, as it turns out, was even harder to follow than Hermione’s mother’s. At the very least, Hermione’s parents had taken a fairly hands-off approach to their daughter’s dieting, only ever passively denying her fattening foods and never actively forcing her to change her lifestyle. Mark, meanwhile, clearly believed in the hands-on approach, messaging her at least five times a day to make sure she was hitting her calorie targets.

Oh yes. There were calorie targets, and very ambitious calorie targets at that. Once term started, Hermione went from subsisting on little else but salads to being expected to eat 4,000 calories a day. She struggled at first; she really had to push herself to meet Mark’s goals, but she met them every day nonetheless. And, as time passed, it got easier and easier, until Hermione could eat 4,000 calories without getting a single stomach ache.

It was, at this point, that Mark increased Hermione’s target’s for the first time.

She was bigger now, after all, he said, fatter than she’d been before her stupid diet, so it was only natural they’d she’d need to eat bigger quantities of food to keep growing. So Hermione now had to eat 4,500 calories a day, and before she’d even had a chance to grow comfortable with that she was having to eat 5,000 day, then 5,500…

Hermione spent Trinity Term with her stomach in constant agony. She left her room less and less, not only because she knew she needed conserve calories, but because half the time she didn’t think she could walk ten steps without throwing up, not with her belly so bloated to the point of almost bursting. Her grades slipped lower and lower as eating took up more and more of her time, and she did voice these concerns to Mark, but he wasn’t worried. She shouldn’t have been either, he said. Her grades didn’t matter.

“All that matters is us.”

And Hermione knew she was right. But all the same, she couldn’t feel a little bit irritated at how analytical mark had become lately. The details of her life now seemed to be of less interest to him than the contents of her stomach. But he was just being a good feeder, Hermione knew that. He expected results from his feedee, and she was determined to give them to him. He deserved them, after all, for being so kind to her. For making her happy.

If only it wasn’t so hard to deliver them. If only Hermione didn’t have to work so hard to give him the satisfaction he deserved. If only the struggle didn’t make Hermione so miserable.

But then again, was she miserable? She hadn’t thought of suicide since they’d started dating, and even in her most debilitating binges it had never entered her mind. It simply wasn’t an option any more, not when she had the perfect the boyfriend, not when he needed her so badly. Mark had singlehandedly-cured her, Hermione thought, and for that she owed him everything, or at least everything he wanted. No matter how much she struggled, she needed to live, and she needed to gain. For Mark.

And besides, she couldn’t deny that he got results. In six weeks, Hermione had already gained back the twenty pounds she’d lost an well as an extra thirty-five. That feeling of deflation she’d gotten to know so well over the Easter vac had vanished; now, not a moment passed without Hermione being aware that she’d never looked sexier. Her butt had ballooned, sticking out several inches now and turning even the most uncomfortable classroom chairs into La-Z-Boys. Her thighs had thickened to the degree that they constantly chafed, transforming Hermione’s walk into an inelegant waddle that drove Mark crazy. Her breasts had swollen several cup sizes larger and had started to sag, coming to rest comfortably on Hermione’ belly. And that belly. That belly… Hermione would compare it to a beach ball if it weren’t already much larger than that, outstretching even Hermione’s enormous breasts. It’d stayed perfectly taught and spherical even as it had began to hang, making it even more deliciously fun to pat and slap and shake than ever before. And that overhang had grown too, grown so large that it now covered her entire crotch, completely concealing her panties from view. Even her shoulders had widened, and were almost matching Harper’s for softness. At the rate she was growing, Hermione fully expected to be 250 lbs by the start of the summer vac.

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was worth the effort.


	9. Chapter 9

“This has gone far enough, don’t you think?”

Hermione stayed silent. It was the easiest thing to do.

“I’m glad you agree,” Hermione’s mother continued, “acknowledging the problem is always the first step towards fixing it. And you will fix this, I promise. We’ll help you.”

“Mother…”

“It’s alright, I can tell you’re upset. Come here.” And before Hermione could protest, she was trapped in her mother’s arms. They were cold, and bony, just as Hermione’s had once been.

“We’ll fix you, Hermione. We’ll fix you.”

Hermione started to cry. Her parents couldn’t fix her. They could only break her further.

***

“Hermione! Time for our run!”

Running. A new addition to Hermione’s parents’ fitness programme. When they’d first starting trying to shrink their daughter, they’d limited their cruelty to enforcing her diet, but now it was time, as Hermione’s mother said, for “more drastic measures”. She would never join Hermione on these workouts; he knees weren’t up to it, she said, her chiropractor said so. Hermione would’ve pointed out that a chiropractor is supposed to be an expert in spines, not knees, but drawing attention to her mother’s mistakes rarely went over well.

So, it was Hermione’s father who would take her for these runs. Hermione had never seen him so enthusiastic before; he was actually addressing her, asking her questions, it was unheard of!

“Come on, are you slow or what?”

See? Enthusiastic. Reluctantly, Hermione was tying her phone buzzed. It was Mark.

_Hope you’ve been keeping your feet up gorgeous…_

“Hermione!” her father bellowed up the stairs, “what’s keeping you?”

_And your tummy full…_

Hermione knew she needed to respond, but she needed to be honest, she loved him after all, and he was always open with her but he didn’t want to him let him down and he didn’t seem to grasp...

“I’m coming upstairs, young lady!” The excitement was gone, he was irritated now, dangerous. This was the father she knew.

“I’m coming father!”

But first she needed to reply to Mark, explain herself, but she couldn’t lie, could never lie…

 _Hermione I just want to know how you’re doing. You seem so distant._ Hermione could her father’s heavy footsteps drawing closer. Without further time to think, she starting typing as fast as her pudgy fingers could manage.

_I’m sorry Mark…_

Hermione didn’t have time to press send. Her father was in her room. He hadn’t knocked. Nobody ever knocked.

“Oh, not your bloody phone again.”

“I’m sorry father.”

“I hope you’re no planning on taking that thing with you.” His monobrow furrowed.

“But I was planning to listen to music-”

“You don’t need music, you have all the sounds of nature to enjoy, isn’t that right?” He smiled, his brow still lowered. “A bit of fresh air will do you good.”

Hermione nodded.

“Oh, look at those chins,” Hermione’s father said sadly, placing a firm hand on her soft shoulder. “We’ll sort this out Hermione, don’t worry. And we can have some father-daughter bonding time while we’re at it!”

Hermione leaned forth: she needed to tie her shoelaces, but really it was just an excuse to get out of her father’s embrace. Unfortunately, leaning forward was a lot harder than it used to be, now that Hermione had a gigantic gut in her way, one that, being a single belly rather than a double, wasn’t especially keen on folding over. She could’ve managed to tie them, but instead Hermione asked her father to do it; he chuckled. Of the two options, that was the slightly less humiliating.

Finally, it was time for the run. Hermione heaved herself to her feet and, her father holding her hand, made her way out of her bedroom. Just as he put his earbuds in, Hermione heard her phone vibrate on the bedside table.

***

Hermione’s new fitness regime was taking its toll. Her body hadn’t known exertion like this since, well, never, and every second of every day it ached in protest. Hermione’s joints were in constant agony, the lactic acid never seemed to leave her veins and no matter how much she showered her skin was smothered in a sticky, slimy layer of sweat. Any motion, even walking, was absolutely arduous, so Hermione couldn’t even bear to think about her homework. Instead, she stayed in bed as much as she could, only getting up for meals and workouts, and even then only reluctantly. As she did less and less, Hermione not only felt less and less beautiful but also less and less human. She had lost her strength, her confidence, her emotions, everything that made her Hermione. Now, she was just a useless lump of ever-shrinking flesh.

All she could think about was all that she’d lost. All she could see was her death. And she would’ve killed herself, without a doubt, if she had any energy to move.

But, suddenly, when her parents told her they’d be a dinner party for the evening, Hermione felt a little colour return to her plump cheeks. Finally, an opportunity to eat real food, junk food, not the bland salads she’d been subsisting on since term ended. She couldn’t wait, she had to tell Mark, just as soon as she was back in bed…

_That’s so awesome!_

_Ikr?_ Hermione replied.

 _Maybe we could do a video call? Haven’t properly spoken in ages!_ During the stuffing? _During the stuffing!_ No that was exciting. Hermione knew she’d get well and truly bloated with her boyfriend egging her on

So, she let him take charge. Like she always did. He revelled in his power, and she got wet as he exercised it. He would choose the food, he would decide when she stopped, it was all up to him and Hermione couldn’t wait for him to undo all the nasty weight loss her parents had forced on her.

And yet, when the moment came, she couldn’t help wishing he’d done things a bit differently.

“Come on, eat it, it’s good for you!”

It was; Hermione knew that much. Absolutely packed with calories. Practically the poster-child of the obesity epidemic.

“It’s just a Big Mac!”

Just a Big Mac. Just a cow, with its head chopped off, its organs removed and fed through a million spinning saw blades that crushed its bones and turned its flesh into mush…

“Just think about the good it’ll do you!”

It’s calves would’ve watched as their mother was taken away, heard the dull metal grind of the slaughterhouse, then the silence… Then one day it’d be their turn, then their calves’, because the violence could never end, not with people like her around, with their desperate, unquenchable hunger for calories…

“Bite it.”

That was it. Mark had gone Dom, and Hermione was powerless to resist. Even if it didn’t turn her on so much, she’d never have had the resilience to stand up to someone so handsome, so forceful.

Hermione bit into the burger.

She didn’t taste the bun, or the sauces, or even the cheese. The only flavour filling her mouth was the meat. Soft, rich, and juicy; it even tasted sinful. Then she swallowed, and Hermione felt the flesh slowly slide down her through in a puddle of grease, leaving a streak on the roof of her mouth. She did her best to clean it with her tongue, but she only made the problem worse, spreading the substance all over her mouth, and then she noticed the bits stuck in her teeth. Thick, gristly chunks of black and pink, peppering her smile and revealing her guilt. Now, she had become a vampire.

And there were three burgers to go. And two boxes of McNuggets.

“That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

“I guess not,” Hermione said, softly.

“I’m so proud of you, Hermione. Do this daily and you’ll get really massive.”

“I can’t wait,” she said, forcing a smile. And she couldn’t wait, that was what scared her. So she ate the burger, and the nuggets, more and more and more and got fuller and fuller and fuller…

Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. Hermione’s greed and desperation to enlarge herself had long since given her enough motivation to keep stuffing her face long after the point it started to hurt. If anything, the pain motivated her, aroused her, but not this time. Now it was just pain, simple, uncomplicated pain, and it was enough to make Hermione want to stop. But she couldn’t stop, not when mark was watching, she couldn’t ruined the moment, it was so sexy!

“Talk dirty to me Mark. Tell me how fat you’ll make me.”

So he did. At length. And Hermione started touching herself, and feeding herself with her free hand. She did her best to ignore the taste and the texture in her mouth: she needed to focus on Mark’s words, the burning in her crotch, she needed to get through this, get fatter-

“Hermione!”

It appears the dinner party had ended early.

***

“So,” Hermione began awkwardly, “it’s been a while.”

“Yes, it has,” Harper replied, gravely. “I tried to reach you. Kept emailing you.”

“I know.” Hermione’s shame was visible even through the webcam. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. You don’t owe me anything.”

“I owed it to myself. And besides, you deserved better.”

“I’m your counsellor, you don’t owe me anything. I’m here to help _you_.”

“You deserved an explanation. At the very least a goodbye.” Harper smiled.

“I’ll admit that would’ve been nice,” she said. “I was worried. Really worried.”

“I mean… I guess you had good cause to be.”

“Seems like I have a lot of catching up to do!”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

It took Hermione forty-five minutes to explain everything that’d happened. And for the first time, she explained everything: even the gain. Harper wasn’t surprised by that revelation at all, or even remotely judgemental; she never was, but for some reason Hermione thought discovering how much of a perverted freak her client was might have been too much for her.

“There’s worse out there,” Harper chuckled, “Much, much worse!”

Hermione wasn’t a freak, she said. It was brave of her to follow her passions, even when her peers and her parents looked down on her for it. It was something she needed to do for herself, and she should’ve been proud she’d done it. That was why she needed to do more: follow more passions, live more life, become the person she dreamed of being instead of just getting the body she dreamed of having.

But then, of course, there was the question of Mark.

“Have you told him how all this makes you feel?” Hermione nodded. “And he hasn’t changed?”

“He says we both have to work for our relationship. Both have to struggle.”

“Do you ever see him struggle?”

“Well, not at the moment,” Hermione began, “now we’re apart.”

“Of course.” Harper went silent. Silent for too long.

“I mean, I know he struggles,” Hermione spluttered out. “He struggles with me.”

“Right.” Harper still did not react.

“He has to struggle,” Hermione persisted, “he struggles because he loves me. Love is a struggle; everybody knows that.”

“So he loves you?”

“Of course.”

“And respects you?

“He loves me.”

“But does he respect you?” Hermione paused.

“I don’t know. I’ve never considered it.”

“Hermione, I think you need to ask yourself... Is it him you love or the man he could’ve been?”

***

“But we had so much fun…”

“We really did. I mean it” Hermione leaned away from her phone to cough. The tears were starting to fall. “You opened my eyes to so many new things, things I never dreamed were possible… Sorry, I’m probably being hyperbolic, but I think it’s true.”

“It is. And you did the same to me.” Hermione could hear Mark crying too. “And that’s why you can’t do this.” At the sound of his voice quivering, Hermione already felt her resolve fade away. This was draining, but she had to do this.

“I need to live my life, Mark.”

“And you can’t with me?”

“Not right now…” Hermione began to say, but then she realised. Hadn’t Mark always deserved honesty?

“I can’t,” she said, firmly, “not now, not ever.”

“But why?” Mark wailed.

“Because I can’t be your big fat Barbie, alright? I need to be myself.”

“I love you Hermione, I love you for yourself, and what we had was so special…” This hurt more than all the exercise that came beforehand, but rationally Hermione knew it shouldn’t have.

“Goodbye, Mark.”

“No, don’t go, don’t hang up…”

Mark’s phone beeped, and Hermione’s cherubic face disappeared from his dashboard, replaced with a utilitarian array of app icons. She couldn’t hear him now, he knew that, but all the same he had to tell her, had to gasp it out…

“You’ll be nothing without me,” he whimpered.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Peachpeachplumb for the illustration! Check out their work at: https://peachpeachplumb.tumblr.com/

Well.

It was time.

The moment everyone had been waiting for.

And Hermione had overslept.

It wasn’t an especially unusual occurrence any more. Since she dumped Mark nearly a year ago now, Hermione had been started sleeping easier than she ever had before. The horrid thoughts and anxieties that kept her awake for so long disappeared one by one, and while some of them still reared their ugly heads occasionally, they were no longer overwhelming to deal with. So Hermione could sleep at last, and sleep she did: a lot. It was relaxing after all, not to mention good for her waistline.

Of course, Hermione’s new found sleepiness wasn’t always beneficial.

Blinking the sleepy-dust from her eyes, Hermione heaved herself to her feet and checked the time on her phone. 10:30. There was still time to make it.

All she had to do was get dressed.

Sub-fusc, from the Latin sub fuscus, is required by all Oxford students when sitting exams. Sub fuscus literally translates to “dark brown”, so it’s a fitting name for the outfit consisting of a black suit, a black gown, a black mortarboard, a black shoes. Men must also wear a black or white bow tie, and women can choose whether to wear a bowtie in one of those two colours or a black ribbon: white ribbons are highly taboo. It’s also traditional to have a rose pinned to the gown on the day of one’s final exam, so Oxford students typically exchange flowers amongst their friends as a means of wishing each other good luck during the coming gauntlet.

Hermione didn’t have a rose, but she didn’t mind in the slightest. She was concerned with a more practical issue. Sub-fusc was complicated and elaborate to put on at the best of times, but Hermione hadn’t put hers on in a week, when her last exam was. And she had most certainly grown bigger in that week; hours of stress-eating during last-minute revision sessions had taken their toll. Hermione had already had to buy new sub-fusc once, as a consequence of her post-Prelims gains, but doing the same now was simply not an option, not with her final paper in half an hour…

So. The moment of truth. Would the skirt button?

Things didn’t look promising: it had already been tough for Hermione to slide the skirt up her thick, fleshy thighs and past her bulbous backside, so buttoning it around her puffy middle looked to be nigh impossible. Nevertheless, she had to try. With a single flabby forearm, Hermione clumsily raised her gargantuan gut out of the way, and, gritting her teeth, quickly started fiddling with her fly using her free hand. She couldn’t see what she was doing beneath her belly at all, but even so she could tell that there was quite a sizeable distance between the button and the clasp, a distance that seemed impossible to bridge. But she had to try. She pinched them together, and again, and again, with all the forth her pudgy fingers could must: to no avail. And Hermione’s other arm was tired, too tired to go on… Her belly fell, plopping downwards at some speed, pushing the button and the clasp to opposite sides of its gelatinous mass.

Exhausted, Hermione plonked herself down on her bed, and watched her belly continue to wobble. Maybe she could go to the exam halls like this? It’s not like she was completely indecent or anything, and there was no risk of the skirt falling down completely, not with the way it was resting on her booty shelf… No, she couldn’t. She had self-respect, and she deserved to maintain it. The skirt would button. It would, because Hermione wanted it to.

Hermione lay back on her bed, feeling her duvet catch in a few of her fat rolls, and breathed in. Even with her stomach sucked in and cascading towards the ground, Hermione still couldn’t see her crotch, but all the same she pushed the button and the clasp together, pushed with all her might…

And breathe out.

It was buttoned.

All that remained was the shirt and the gown, and neither one of those posed much difficulty. The shirt was tight, yes, its buttons were pushed almost to their limit, but Hermione had trouble squeezing herself into it. The gown, of course, was loose anyway, and so was never going to be challenge. All the same, Hermione loved the way they looked on her: the way her belly bulged out between her shirt buttons, the way the front of the gown curved around her breasts and over her stomach, it was all very flattering for her figure. She didn’t have time to admire it, however. She had an exam, after all. And then, in a few days, her graduation ceremony.

Already worn out, Hermione waddled her way out her room and down the stairs as fast as her lardy legs could carry her. She was lucky that it was only a short walk to the exam hall, but all the same she was sweating like a pig by the time she arrived there. Exercise. Still Hermione’s greatest nemesis, even now she was free from her parents’ fitness regime of terror. It tired her so much that Hermione didn’t even feel fully awake when she slowly lumbered her way to her desk; only once she squeezed herself into her seat did she remember the gravity of her situation. This was her final exam. If she failed, she could lose everything. Her career prospects could vanish. She might never be able to move out of her parents’ house. She could be forced to lose all the weight she’d gained. She could say goodbye to her dignity.

No. That wouldn’t happen; Hermione had studied too hard. In the part year and a half, she’d gone from a suicidal skeleton to the confident, beautiful woman of her dreams. She’d survived a toxic relationship. She’d found freedom from her parents, and was well on her way to ridding herself of them for good. She’d gained 211lbs.

Hermione could do anything.

***

Two hours. Three essays. Simple on paper, but far more difficult in practice. In the humidity of the exam hall, Hermione seemed to forget everything she’d ever learnt about the romantics. What was it Manfred said to the hunter? What was the name of the love interest in _The Last Man_? Who was the bastard behind _MacFlecknoe?_ The answers always came, but never immediately, and those little periods of cluelessness slowly eroded Hermione’s confidence. It was the quotes that were most problematic; failing to get them exactly right would lose Hermione precious marks, but all the same, she couldn’t write an essay without at least _some_ close reading. Hermione found herself constantly checking her essays whenever she had a few free seconds, desperate to make sure that every quote was correct, only to almost always conclude that, yes, they were. But then again, was it really “for beasts of burthen”? Or was it “for birds of prey”? Just what was that godforsaken quote, what was it he said to the hunter…?

Hermione scarcely had time to collect her thoughts, let alone remember, such was the speed she was forced to scribble at. She had so many points to make, and only two hours! So she wrote, and wrote, and wrote, her initial plans abandoned one by one in favour of new arguments; better arguments, hopefully. Or were they? Yes, Hermione reminded herself. Yes they were. She could do this. She would finish on time, she would get a first, she would stick it to everybody that was mattered, prove it to herself…

And then the bell rang.

When her previous exams had finished, Hermione had only ever felt nervous. After all, there might have been so many mistakes on those papers, mistakes she could no longer do anything to fix… This time was different, however. Hermione just felt relieved that it was all over. Relieved, yes; and a little proud. She exhaled, and leaned back to work the cramp out of her fingers, when it happened.

No more skirt button.

Time seemed to slow down. First, Hermione heard the tiny pop in the near-silence of the hall, then felt her stomach spill forth and flow all over her lap, engulfing it completely. For a few seconds, Hermione was embarrassed, and even started to blush, but then she remembered: she liked being fat. She loved being fat! She had worked just as hard to get this fat as she had for her exams, and there was no reason to be ashamed of her accomplishment. This button pop represented everything she had struggled for, everything she’d achieved, and, in spite of her surroundings, it turned her on. More than that: it made her feel titanic. If she was superstitious, she’d have said it was a sign.

Besides, it felt good to relieve the pressure on her flab!

So, when Hermione got to her feet she didn’t care that her fleshy underbelly was hanging out for all to see. Most people were too busy reflecting on the last few hours to notice and she didn’t even care about the ones who did. She was gorgeous, she was sexy, and she knew it, because she felt it.

Slowly, Hermione lumbered her way out of the building, past the swarms of posh twats drenching themselves in champagne and confetti and costing the council tens of thousands of pounds in clean-up costs. Hermione had a better way to celebrate. Just as wasteful? Perhaps, but much better for the environment, and definitely more enjoyable.

That night, she would have the biggest stuffing of her life. She would eat more than Mark could ever believe her capable of consuming. She would eat like a queen, nay, a goddess, and only the richest, fattiest, tastiest treats were worthy of her divine gluttony.

That night, Hermione would celebrate.

***

Several days and several stuffings later, and it was finally time for Hermione’s graduation. The last three years of hardship had all been in service in this day, and Hermione couldn’t wait too see the back of it. Finally, Hermione could wave goodbye to judgemental toffs and pushy parents for good. Finally, she could be free.

Of course, before any of that could happen, the sub-fusc had to go on again, but Hermione wasn’t quite ready to get dressed yet. There was an important ritual to do first. Dressed only in her underwear, Hermione waddled over to her mirror, and gazed at the blubbery body facing her.

Just a year and a half ago, that body had been skinny. Skeletal, even. Clinically underweight. Her breasts had been miniscule, her bottom bony and her belly non-existent. A single second serving was enough to fill her stomach, when she could even be bothered to eat at all. She had felt undernourished, unattractive and, above all else, unhappy.

How things had changed. Back then, she’d been a measly 90lbs, but that very morning Hermione had weighed herself and saw the digits tick up and up and up all the way to 313. That was 12 more than she’d been at her last exam, and she hadn’t even been trying to gain. Hermione grinned. She’d trained her body well; plentiful eating and minimal exercise had taught it to keep storing fat no matter what. Now, it would never be able to stop growing.

Hermione couldn’t complain. The changes in her body were remarkable. Her face, once defined by harsh cheekbones and hard edges, was now almost spherical. Her cheeks had grown full, plump and rosy, her scrawny neck had vanished altogether and several flabby chins had appeared, bringing out her natural beauty in a way that make up never could. Below those chins, the bust: once so modest, now so massive. Each mammoth breast was firm and thick, yet soft and saggy; it never ceased to amaze Hermione just how many different ways her fat could feel all at once, and how all of them were simultaneously sexy. With her stubby, pudgy fingers Hermione pushed them out of her bra and jiggled them up and down; the way the moved was amazing, but then Hermione noticed how the way arms, once so noodle-like, wobbled back and forth, sending little vibrations all over their meaty mass, and now it was those that entranced her. Hermione smirked; most girls liked to show of their biceps, but here she was admiring the fat beneath her arms instead.

Tucking her breasts back into her bra, Hermione turned around to observe her rear. Her blobby, bubbly bottom: each cheek heavy, round and smattered with cellulite, both working together to swallow up her already sizeable panties. Above them was a shelf of several inches, enough to make any Kardashian jealous, and lately a large fold had begun to form where it met her blubbery back; one of multiple now covering her behind. Below her butt, her thighs: now less like twigs and more like mountains, they touched all the way down to her knees. Ever lower down, her body was still overwhelmingly fat, with her shins covered in a large layer of chub that led all the way round to her cankles. Everything was fat, everything was beautiful.

But the best was yet to come.

Hermione turned around to behold her proudest achievement. If her ass cheeks were doing their best to hide her panties, then their efforts paled in comparison to that of her belly, which in the last few days had begun to hang not only over her crotch but also a short distance below it, completely concealing Hermione’s modesty no matter how high she raised her legs (which wasn’t very high these days). That was impressive alone, but even more impressive was the fact that, for all its sagginess, Hermione’s belly had retained its roundness as it had enlarged, staying a spherical single belly no matter how big and jiggly it became. That was why Hermione was proudest of her gut; she knew that, to keep a shape like that, it needed to be filled with so much more fat than most bellies that size. That Hermione had got a belly like hers whilst still having gigantic breasts and a gargantuan butt meant that she had added a ridiculous amount of fat to her frame.

And all in a year and a half.

As much as Hermione wished she could stay this way forever, snacking on sweets and shaking her fat, Hermione knew she needed to get her sub-fusc on. It was graduation day, after all.

Though Hermione was now even larger, her sub-fusc was actually easier to get on than last time, purely because the button on the skirt was well-and-truly broken. Though pulling it past her thighs and over her ass was still a challenge, Hermione didn’t worry about any further wardrobe malfunctions because her colossal butt-shelf would stop it from ever falling down. Of course, there was no getting around the fact that her underbelly was going to be peeking out of her shirt in her graduation photos, thanks to the now-unfastenable fly, but somehow that knowledge didn’t intimidate Hermione in the slightest. If anything, it made her proud.

So, Hermione didn’t care about the stares it earned her on the way to the way to the Sheldonian. She didn’t mind that, when she took her seat in the amphitheatre, it brushed the head of the man in front of her and knocked his mortarboard off. She wasn’t even upset by the oinks she heard from the row behind her; in fact, those were more flattering than offensive.

Thus, when it was time for her graduation photo, Hermione couldn’t wait to show off. She loved every aspect of her appearance: the way her chunky forearms stretched her shirt sleeves to their limits, the way her gown outlined her bust as it flowed around it, the way her skirt rested on her ravishingly wide hips and, yes, the way her big, beautiful belly flashed forth from beneath her shirt, hanging out for the whole world to see. So naughty, so sexy, so perfect.

After the photographer had finished, Hermione peered over at her parents. They looked horrified, ashamed even that what should’ve been the proudest picture on their walls would forever be defined by that soft, succulent symbol of weight gain and gluttony.

Hermione had never been more happy.

_THE END_


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